What is the optimal diet for improving cycling performance? There are a lot of theories on what diets, cyclists and other endurance athletes should be following to maximize their potential. So today we're going to take a look at the science to get a clearer answer on this muddy topic. The good news is that it doesn't need to be nearly as complicated as a lot of people make it out to be. Welcome back to another video. There are a lot of factors that contribute to your performance on the bike, probably the biggest being the training that you actually do on the bike, but a close second would be what you're putting in your mouth to fuel that training and recovery. Yeah, but where does the lateral stiffness and vertical compliance of my $5,000 carbon frame rank? That's got to be a close third, right? I mean, that's what the bike industry has led me to believe. Despite diet being such an important piece of the puzzle, there's a lot of confusion out there about what an endurance athlete should be eating. There's a lot of focus on certain aspects of diet that don't matter nearly as much as people give it credit for, and then other aspects that are completely overlooked that have a large impact on performance. First things first, we should probably discuss macronutrient ratios or the ratio of carbs, fat and protein in your diet. The reason I want to get this out of the way right off the bat is because a lot of cyclists and athletes in general love to obsess about their macronutrient ratios. And macronutrient ratios are the basis of a lot of popular diets out there from high carb ones like 80, 10, 10 to high fat ones like the ketogenic diet. This is far from the whole picture, though, and actually may be a lot less important than you think. With that being said, though, you can definitely screw this up by going to extreme with one macronutrient, and that goes for going to extreme with carbs, fat and protein. Let's not forget that going overboard on one macronutrient usually comes at the cost of another macronutrient. For example, if you're really trying to pound in the carbs all the time, you may be consuming a lot less fat. And while fat isn't the primary fuel source for training, it's still important. In this review article on the optimal composition of an athlete's diet, they state that lower dietary fat intakes are correlated with reduced resting serum testosterone concentrations in males and with menstrual dysfunction and its associated disorders in females.  At just 20 to 25 percent for athletes, but it still needs to be present. The same goes for protein. If higher protein intakes result in an insufficient carbohydrate intake, this increases the likelihood of a negative impact on training capability when training loads are high. That being said, going to extreme with macronutrient ratios is something that's commonly seen with fat, because for whatever reason, the ketogenic and other low carb diets have gained a lot of popularity amongst endurance athletes. And I say for whatever reason, because if you actually look at the science, you'll find that there is no reason. In this review on carbohydrate dependence in endurance athletes, they concluded that despite renewed popular interest in high fat, low carbohydrate diets for endurance sports, fat-rich diets do not spare carbohydrates or improve training capacity and performance, but instead directly impair rates of muscle glycogenalysis and energy flux. I could go on and on about how low carb diets are not optimal for endurance sports, and I have in other videos and you can check those out if you still aren't convinced. But for the sake of time, let's move on to carbs and protein. As I said earlier, carbs are your source of fuel as an endurance athlete. And the research on this is abundantly clear. For example, this 2011 meta analysis on the topic looked at 88 randomized crossover studies on carbohydrate consumption and endurance performance and came to the conclusion that carbohydrates show a large benefit to performance. Being well-fed with carbohydrates for high intensity days or long rides is crucial if you want to get the most out of that workout. However, that doesn't mean that you need to eat a ton of carbs all the time. For low intensity days or days where you don't ride at all, you may want to reduce the number of calories you're eating that day, mainly by reducing the amount of carb-rich foods that you're eating. And now we get to everyone's favorite macronutrient, the macronutrient that can do no wrong, that you should supposedly be shoveling in your face constantly, and that is protein. Given the sarcastic tone of that last sentence, you may think that I'm not that big a fan of protein or that I think it's overrated. Well, actually, it is the most overrated macronutrient, but that doesn't mean that it's not important. Protein is critically important, especially for athletes. From this review on protein for athlete weight loss, the requirement for protein to sustain lean mass increases while in negative energy balance. And protein as a macronutrient may have advantages with respect to satiety, and it may allow greater fat loss during a negative energy balance. OK, we know that protein is important, but how critical is it that you hyper-focus on protein like so many cyclists do? Making sure that every meal is high in protein, checking labels for the amount of protein a given food has, taking protein supplements, etc. Back to this review, they state that some athletes have become overzealous with their focus on consuming protein. Although there are no convincing arguments regarding the danger of excessive protein intakes, it is known that excess protein cannot be stored and that it is simply oxidized. One potential problem with overwaring about getting enough protein is that it may come at the expense of another macronutrient, most notably carbohydrates. But hold up, Dylan. Don't athletes who need to recover from intense exercise require more protein? Well, yes, but not nearly as much as you might think. This review on protein requirements for endurance athletes states that for the well-trained endurance athlete training four to five times per week, there appears to be a very modest increase in dietary protein requirements of only 20 to 25 percent. For the top sport elite endurance athletes, the increase in dietary protein intake may be up to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. And while this sounds like a lot, there's no need for supplementation with a mixed diet providing adequate energy and only 10 to 15 percent coming from dietary protein. For example, an energy intake of about 3,500 calories per day would amount to about 125 grams of protein per day or about 1.7 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. So while protein is important, it's actually not in short supply. And as an endurance athlete who needs to consume more calories per day to begin with, getting enough is rarely an issue. If you're not getting enough protein, it will lead to slower recovery and other potential issues. But the number of people not getting enough protein is staggeringly low. From this USDA survey, the number of Americans who don't get enough protein is only 3 percent. And clearly it's not the nutrient we should be most concerned about. My advice on protein is simple. If you're eating a well-balanced diet with a variety of whole foods, not processed ones, and you're eating enough to meet your caloric needs, especially as an endurance athlete who needs to eat more to begin with, then getting enough protein is not really something that you need to worry about and protein supplementation is largely unnecessary. Dude, are you trying to kill our business here? Look, guys, getting your protein from real food is like actually studying for a test instead of just sitting next to the nerdy kid in math class and copying off of their answer. Yeah, it's the wholesome thing to do, but would you rather be wholesome or get an A? Or in this case, crush skulls in a D-race on Zwift. This is actually the approach that you should take with all three macronutrients. Sure, consume more carbohydrates before, during and after hard training sessions and or races. But other than that, stop concerning yourself with what your exact macronutrient ratio is all the time. If you're eating a wide variety of whole foods, then you'll be fine because there's a lot of wiggle room here, as long as you're not going too extreme in one direction or the other, which you'd have to consciously think about doing anyway. With macronutrients out of the way, let's get to what really matters, which is what are you actually eating? This gets a lot less attention than the carbs, fats and protein debate, but is arguably more important. I already alluded to what you should be focusing on earlier, and that is getting in a variety of whole foods, and these should be mostly plant foods. Why is this important? Well, let's start with weight loss. Most of us could stand to lose a few pounds before we spend a couple hundred bucks on a crankset that's 150 grams lighter than the one we currently have. That's it.  The thing to remember about weight loss is that if you're constantly hungry, this is not sustainable. You may be able to lose weight in the short term, but if you're living in a state of hunger, then you will most likely gain the weight back. So how do we get around this issue of hunger? By following a diet that's low in calorie density, low calorie density means for the same amount of food you're consuming fewer calories, meaning that you're less likely to overeat. This study on the energy density of foods affects on energy intake provided subjects with meals for two days during three separate testing sessions. In these three sessions, the subjects consumed either low, medium or high density or calorie density meals. The results showed that significantly more calories were consumed for the higher energy density conditions, even though the amount of food by weight was relatively similar. Calories consumed were around 1,800 for the high energy density group and below 1,400 for the low. The study concluded that the energy density influenced energy intake independent of macronutrient composition and that subjects reported no difference in feelings of hunger or fullness. And while this is just one study, this systematic review on dietary energy density and body weight looking at many studies confirm these findings, concluding that there is a growing body of scientific evidence suggesting a relationship between energy density and body weight and that consuming diets low in energy density may be an effective strategy for managing body weight. OK, so eating low calorie density is clearly an effective weight loss strategy. But what does eating low calorie density actually look like? Whole plant foods like fruits and vegetables have the lowest calorie density and just so happened to have the highest nutrient density, meaning for a given weight of food, they have the most micronutrients. OK, great, that's probably good for your long term health or whatever. But this is a cycling performance channel. Health is fine. But, you know, what about my FTP?  The reason you should care from a performance perspective is because nutrient dense foods, particularly ones that are high in antioxidants, help with the recovery process. For example, let's take a high antioxidant food like tomatoes. This study looking at the effect of tomato juice on oxidative stress found that those drinking tomato juice after workouts ran significantly farther than they had previously, while the control group saw no improvement. The tomato juice drinkers also showed a reduction in markers of oxidative stress, leading to the conclusion that the antioxidant like a peen in the tomato reduced oxidative stress and improved performance. The same has been found in other high antioxidant foods like cherry juice, which has been shown to increase antioxidant capacity after a marathon leading to aided recovery and in another study reduced symptoms of exercise induced muscle damage. That study showed that strength loss after eccentric exercise was 22 percent with a placebo, but only 4 percent when subjects consume cherry juice. Blueberries are another rich source of antioxidants and have been shown to reduce inflammation after two and a half hours of running. Improved recovery, lower calorie density, leading to reduced weight without constantly feeling hungry. And on top of all of that, loading your diet with whole foods, mostly from plants, is one of the healthiest ways that you can eat. And in a sport that is so reliant on your cardiovascular system, this may provide further benefits. A study on plant-based diets for cardiovascular safety and performance in endurance sports stated that surprisingly, endurance athletes may have more advanced atherosclerosis and more myocardial damage compared with sedentary individuals, particularly as they age. However, plant-based diets address key contributors to atherosclerosis, dyslipidemia, elevated blood pressure, elevated body weight and diabetes. On top of this, the reduced blood viscosity from eating plant-based may improve tissue oxygenation, potentially improving athletic performance. All right, that was a lot of information, so let's tie this all together and I'll show you what this kind of diet should look like with some examples. First, stopping so concerned with your macronutrient ratios and even calorie counting for that matter. If you're eating a whole food, low calorie density diet with a variety of foods, it shouldn't be a challenge to meet your macronutrient and micronutrient needs. And yes, that includes protein. The one exception to this is to make sure that you're getting enough carbohydrates before, during and after high intensity workouts, long rides and races to ensure the best possible performance and quickest recovery. You should eat until you're satisfied. And if you're eating low calorie density foods, you can do this and still lose weight if that's a goal for you. The majority of the food that you eat should be whole foods and plant based. We're talking fruits, vegetables, beans, lentils, sweet potatoes, whole grains like brown rice, quinoa, oats, nuts and seeds, spices like cumin and turmeric. And in fact, spices are packed with those antioxidants that aid in recovery. So they're great to include. A typical day of eating for me might include oatmeal for breakfast with peanut butter or almond butter and a variety of berries like blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, etc.  And then a lot of veggies, the more vegetables and or fruits that you include in your meal, the lower the calorie density of that meal will be. So if weight loss is a goal for you, make sure that fruits and vegetables take up the majority of your plate. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a like, subscribe for weekly science based cycling videos just like this one and share this video with your cycling friends. I'll see you in the next one.


Okay. Very good morning. It is Wednesday 13th of January. As you can see, I'm joined by none other than Sam North. He's been building up his bid for his return to the morning briefing, but I thought I'd get Sam on because we've got a new group on our professional trade program at the moment. And what I wanted to do was bring Sam on because as you see, I deliver the briefing generally on the macro fundamental basis every morning. But I wanted to really connect the two in how is it that what I talk about then gets implemented in terms of a trading strategy and obviously Sam is a trader. He trades every day. So I'm an analyst. So it's good to I think connect the dots and see how from a macro point of view, we can turn that into an actionable trading strategy. And Sam's going to be on. He can talk through the charts with a little bit more of a technical perspective. And hopefully we can tie in the news as well. So first things first, let's just have a quick look at the charts and how things are looking this morning. So the overall general sentiment was we had a fairly flat close on Wall Street, actually, I mean it was one of the more quiet days I'd say the US indices compared to what we have been accustomed to in recent weeks. So pretty flat across the three majors. I think, as I've said, a couple times in Amphi live stream this week. I think this week specifically is quite back loaded the second half of the week really commencing today with US CPI this afternoon.  We've got jobless retail sales there's a number of things as well as US earnings as well with the big banks on Friday coming up. Did I think just lends its hand then given the run up and general move we've had across asset classes since the blue wave, almost surprised to some extent, that was confirmed last week, a little bit of a hiatus in price movement, just awaiting then some of these other bigger fundamental events to unfold. So, interesting things to have a look at then and perhaps then for Sam to talk us through on some of the charts is in the FX space. So we've had a pretty decent bounce in the dollar of course, in the last couple of sessions but that did start to piece up a little bit. Yesterday, and that did help underline support for some of the major pairs, particularly a little bit out performance in cable. One thing has talked about the briefing yesterday that perhaps might explain some of that partially is the fact that the vaccination program has been speeding up in the UK. We've had earlier adopters of authorizing and then rolling out the vaccine sense of Pfizer and AstraZeneca so little bit out performance and pound and I've seen this morning I said some quite interesting levels so perhaps we could start there and have a look at some of the dollar pairs Sam. Yeah, absolutely. Let me just share my screen and bring on the pound and as you mentioned, the dollar pairs did hit some key support yesterday and maybe the evening before and the pound which will talk through first. You can see just coming up my screen in a moment this, this had a really nice trend channel or trend line was called it for now where you can see clearly respect to go back to the high that we had on the first real trading day of the year the fourth of Jan there and was held really nicely all through yesterday session as well until we pop through and as is the case with some of these breaks, you know they really do push on and doesn't matter if it seems overbought or whatever and yeah took out the high here and you know as we looked then this was the next key level and we didn't quite close the day above the high that we had on the sick which was also the low that we had on the fourth but whatever we do to then and I guess then we look at it on the break will be pretty key so for the pound at the moment pretty good. I would say wouldn't be too surprising for us to have a bit of a retracement back down towards this area, some of those support points that you were talking about. And we were saying this in the sort of the closing end of day calls for the pound. It would have been so key if cable could have closed below 134 55 on the futures but it couldn't. And then it reversed and you know then next thing you know you breaking above the previous support term resistance sellers would be super happy to see it come up to that point but then go lower. It doesn't we push on and next thing you know as we said 137 comes in and it's almost at the high of the year so the levels are respected well. Just going to bring that on and as you mentioned that had a decent move yesterday same again couldn't break lower and what a level support I mean this is just fantastic and a couple of the guys, the back traders although I think it's Gavin got one of these trades up from those lows or it might be in the pound, but I will wave fantastic and you can see again it's that got that solid resistance when we look at these lows that goes, and it doesn't hold back and that's just people that are short they don't want to be in this anymore. And also for you I'm really really interested to see where we finish the week here. I mean we're still down on the week. But I tell you what a close above the sort of the breakdown area that we had back in April 2018 the first close above that that that whole point. It's going to be super super key we're in a bit of a mini range. You'd call it bigger move to come if we can either break above breakdown below, although ultimately that whole 120 area. I'd actually do quite like the look of a long so yeah decision time to come and I think you can absolutely understand why price couldn't further break down yesterday but yeah it looks good. Certainly for the year and pound although hitting resistances this this early morning. Yeah I mean one thing to be aware of for today is from an economic kind of point of view from a data perspective it's pretty much not existent as far as the UK Europe is concerned but Christine the guard the ESP president speaking at nine o'clock and she's taking part in a q amp a open session at a Reuters event. Now she did speak earlier on Monday in the week but she didn't really say anything it was a very off topic kind of appearance that she was she was hosting so this certainly brings about a prospect that definitely she could say something in terms of what she could say. I guess it's the usual things if you think about when the last ECB meeting was a few weeks ago, you know what's changed well a blue wave for one there's been a notable market movement and that will lead us on to talking about the Fed. Some of their rhetoric we've had in the last 24 hours been particularly interesting. So anything about the blue wave repercussions that might have for US global economy does that also the the kind of policy view at all for the ECB vaccination roll out. We were talking about this beginning of the week Europe's been very slow to really adopt, particularly the astro drug which really is much more wide kind of scale in terms of its manufacturing distribution capabilities and think it was France is administering doses at all the UK is doing it 15 times faster than France at the moment so there's a couple of things here which we could be quite interesting if there is a Q&A format with the precedent attendance then to question her on these sorts of things I definitely would be aware of that if you're trading the euro from a fundamental perspective but yeah flipping it over to the Fed and talking about the US. And there's actually a really nice move in US 10 year last night and it came at around six o'clock so I'll bring my chart up for a moment. Bottom right chart here, you can see the timing was around six o'clock so the timing of when government bond auctions come out. We've had bond auctions and we have more coming through the US Treasury throughout this week but it was the 10 year and so the kind of equal maturity bond tends to react quite aggressively when it's being auctioned off or offered. And it was received with high demand bits cover a show was was pretty high, all things considered given the massive amount of additional supply that's coming onto the market still plenty of appetite to purchase this and so markets took that as a catalyst we bounce back up higher. And also putting into context the fact that the 10 years being to be hammered since the blue wave and this whole kind of inflation expectation changed the reflation trade on stimulus and Biden and so on so a little bit of a preview there from from the lows. But one of the things that that's emerged here is a day ago, we had two new voting members on the FMC, barking and bostic, and they were talking about this idea that given the roll out of the vaccine if done successfully then we could be seeing a solid recovery in the US economy by the second half of this year. And if that does happen that might bring about this idea then of talking and discussing of tapering. Now tapering for those who are trading back in 2013 this will ring the alarm bells because that was the period of the taper tantrum. If you go back and look at history and have a look at that episode it was basically when I think it was when Janet Yellen was first coming in. And it was this idea of it's the first very incremental approach towards reducing then the looseness or the commoditiveness of monetary policy. So you stop actively buying bombs you stop tapering it down as a tool in that respect. I would say that that's that earlier fueled some of the kind of Biden blue wave trade, because if anything then that's a tightening policy. Just to rebalance the force almost yesterday and last night particularly was littered with fed speakers.  So him talking about look, it's way too early to be talking about that kind of thing. The future is not assured, just yet, not particularly with the pandemic still raging on in America, but Rosengren who typically as a leaning hawk. He said that basically, we shouldn't even be talking about tapering or purchasing government and mortgage back securities just just yet don't expect that to be a conversation at this point in time so that definitely help that T note bounce. And also would have assisted some of that dollar weakness yesterday because I think people were getting a little bit apprehensive about just the word tapering being brought to the table so the Fed pretty quick to send out the troops to kind of counteract that to alleviate any concerns that that's, you know, still still far from from being a reality. For my opinion, I think it's way too early to be talking about tapering. I was looking at some of the numbers, the number of people being receiving the vaccine in the US at the moment it's still kind of gradually ramping up it's still very low and definitely off initial Trump targets that he set out a few months ago. I don't think that's surprising right now it's pretty much priced in but there's just so many uncertainties around a the development of the virus and be the success or not of the speed of the implementation of the vaccine program that I think you can't really be making assumptions just yet, right out of the woods as to then the second half of the year so yeah that's my kind of take on that that was really the major news for me to talk about other things. Trump, there was a non binding resolution last night where the house basically were forcing Pence kind of like look you've got a trigger that the 25th amendment and get rid of Trump. And he's not going to do that. He's already said he's not going to do that. It's this this is all about making a political point now it's all about the optics for the Democrats and the House which they have more control to just really for push home the point that you're leaving he got his a departing kind of blow we're going to have the impeachment vote today, that's probably going to go through the house that will get rejected in the Senate, end of Trump goes see later so it's not really that big a deal for markets and not really going to comment on it anymore than that but moving on then perhaps we can have a quick talk about oil, Sam, if you want to bring that chart up because we had the API inventories last night. So to get you up to speed we have a slightly surprise, not a massive but a sizeable drawdown of 5.821 million expectations were for a drawdown just shy of 2 million. Cushing was a draw 232,000, but we did our bills in gasoline at one point just shy 1.9 million distillates 4.4 million. So, what was the timing at half nine on the price. Yeah, so we had the API a little bit of a bump higher, and around that 5319 was a relative area of resistance that was restricting some of the price action you see on Sam's chart there. So the API did help act as a bit of a catalyst to what you just saw there on his chart has been a pretty solid rally really ever since the Saudis came out surprised the market, taking, taking that decision to cut supply. So we kind of initiated the next move and with some long term technical levels being breached. We still remain fairly bullish at the moment. A lot of this obviously down to the vaccination program going as per plan and also be particularly interested to see the kind of details and unveils when he does talk about his stimulus plans later on this week. That would be quite key then to see what exactly are we dealing with in terms of the size of potential boost or its likelihood of passing Congress. But Sam from a technical point of view. Any thoughts here. What a moon. I mean what's that 123456789, you know, 10 if this week is positive 1011 weeks to the upside. When we first came to this region 4939, you know, I would have definitely have looked to scale down and you can see that's what the market did really did come down it spent a couple of weeks below it smashed through it last week. And a great finish and it and it looked for all money that is going to hit the next resistance point relatively quickly little school. And first, well first sort of part of this week but we continued up so 5455 looks super important, good resistance back on. Yeah the 18th of February so almost almost 365 days ago although it did go pretty sour from from then as I'm sure we can all imagine so yeah for me that will be the next point to look at.  No, I think 5728 is a bit more important reason being that was just that support point that gave way. Really from, you know, did well literally a year ago the 21st of January week. And then we really did push on obviously some very key support here then broke later we've just got above that as a resistance so yeah 5728 will be not an ultimate target and still legs would to go but a point where I could really understand that being a bit of a breather so for me, if I was multiple contract long multiple lots long, and I'll be looking for the price to come to to this point you know I'm not too interested in sort of looking at, you know, Elliott wave or lunar cycles or anything like that I prefer to look at these key market levels that have been respected before. Last time we brought through this we really push lower, continue down. Yes, there was a fundamental reason for that. What place to take some key profit. So I reckon 5728 nice line in the sand I mean from a psychological point of view a closer week above that. I think we can continue on and on and $60 comes quick but yeah 5728 not the next level because that would be the the point here 5446 but that would be my short term big target. I just wanted to share this for a moment, which is very recognizable. If you're an oil trader. This is looking at Persian Gulf. And the reason why I just wanted to briefly bring this up with some headlines this morning that Iran have conducted missile naval exercises in the Gulf of Amman. So, just wanted to talk about that just briefly. So here's the Gulf of Amman obviously the northern tip of that area and the southern border then of Iran is the major global choke point in the world which is the straight of hummus, which obviously is particularly crucial for the transportation maritime routes coming out of the Persian Gulf and the likes of Saudi Iran Iraq, Kuwait and so on so very, very sensitive area, but oil hasn't really moved and absolutely as what I would expect so and how I'd interpret that type of news flow, which is, why is Iran doing making these kind of noises at the moment well for me it's quite simple, we've got a new administration coming in. You can start kind of re escaping like the landscape, if you like of what is it exactly the team Biden's going to do in the Middle East and with the Iranian nuclear cord and and so on and so forth so they're just, you know, this is all, it's almost like a Brexit posturing, just in a slightly more kind of talking of conducting missile tests and so on but it's the same negotiation point, it's just making a stance in order before then you deal with the new, what will be political force which will be the Biden administration so for me I don't really see this at this point, and turning into anything more than just rhetoric, however, obviously this is a highly sensitive area, geographically for oil prices and if there were, if we move back into thinking about this time last year Sam. Remember it was, I remember the Daily Mail putting out a headline of we're heading into World War three. That was when obviously the Iranian Revolutionary Commander got got killed and then there was the prelude to that was lots of, you know, kind of drones being shut down on disputed territory and that particular area and cargo ships getting captured and we're not quite at that level. Right now, however, it's definitely worth just bearing in mind and keeping an eye on and certainly any disruptions here would obviously be a strong positive force to push oil up through some of these technical levels but I wouldn't anticipate that being this situation anymore than just rhetoric at this point in time. Let's look then Sam, perhaps some of the US indices, I know it was quite a quiet day yesterday but we've got CPI coming out later on this afternoon inflation is like to move higher on gasoline prices obviously just looked at oil has had a phenomenal ride of late, but outside of that price pressures, the perception is they're still pretty benign. I don't think it's the point of people getting spooked just yet about inflation remember this whole inflation trade that people have been looking at the blue wave we're talking about future inflation. Not that it's emerging right now because remember in the US specifically, we're in the midst of stricter increasingly sort of lockdown measures at this point in time just going to impede demand generally speaking so yeah US indices though Sam any any Let me bring you on the S&P now. One of my favorite trades really from from the back end of last year cross multi asset has been the false break of a level and, especially when you've had a nice, you know, not necessarily nice because admittedly in recent weeks it hasn't been one direction completely but it has still been an uptrend and it has been for a while. But the sort of the false break when it looks like on the intraday that it could break down and it just can't quite you get these false sort of pushes lower and then you get the reversal. And it's been a really good opportunity, like I said across multi assets we saw it in the euro and the pound earlier in the briefing we just seen it now with the S&P as well so that's an area to certainly keep an eye on if I was, you know, long medium term shorter and you know this is the level for me where I would start to just panic a touch if we come lower 3774 really nice support in recent time but also the high that we had back on the before for Jan so it was, you know, another key level so that for me marks an important point to the downside we look to the upside where you've got a pretty key resistance and you're going to have to call it a zone you know today is high. If it breaks above that you've got to be careful because yesterday's highs just above that then you've got the R1 then you've got the high back on the 11 so it's it's a zone and a key one at that because you've almost got three reasons or four if you could today's a bit of a mini range now what happens when we get up to there will be will be interesting a break above then we look at new all time high territory. If we do find resistance and come back down midpoint or be a choppy you would have to sort of give it towards the pivot as another key level so these would be the three points that I would look at today and whether they even come in to get tested of course we don't know but that's how I would see it on the the longer time frame and I was looking at this with a few of the guys yesterday just about you know using Fibonacci I'm not a massive fan of it but on longer time frames I will consider it and I was just looking at sort of this recent push that we've had to the upside and depending where we take it from 30th October low or the 24th again up to you and that's maybe the issue and actually is that not everyone will have it on the same point but this whole region here the 38.2 3600 that would be a lovely pullback to get in but like you said is there a worry at the moment are people panicking not just yet about stopped and for us to get down there will be a 60% move I don't know about you but I can't quite see that happening just yet so but now I'll be looking at other highs and 37, 33 or as we said you know even maybe another little false break of 37, 74 could be worthwhile thinking about. A quick look over NASDAQ it's okay with you as well as the Dow before looking at the longer time frames you can see that yesterday as well came down to it sort of a lovely area of support and it's that false break I really like this across the board, I think the Dow Jones did the same albeit on its sort of previous overnight low the day look at these false breaks here price comes through can't close comes up it's a support and get off to the races but importantly today can't quite get above this all important resistance level so stuck in a range. And, and yeah, I mean the more times we come down to test those supports, you know do you want to get long but I think overall for now, we can continue higher I would say and how do you, how do you see the short term. Yeah, it's interesting because there's, you know, we were looking at the T note move from yesterday there's obviously a decent pop on the upside, the equities have blinked this whole talk about tapering. Obviously from an income perspective it's a little bit more direct. In regard to probably yield sensitivity but stocks stocks not bothered by any of that chatter and I think that's quite telling you've also had number of people come out criticize big tech and obviously none other than Donald is spearheading that talking about their controlling society and we should, you know, take away their powers. But the one thing that this probably will lead to this situation that did happen, whoever's fault it was on Capitol Hill is that, you know, the Democrats will be doing just the same. So we have to re look at the types of regulations over big tech and we know that big tech is such a proportionate, you know, large representation of what really is the stock market these days so even with that, the market still not coming off so but it's hard to see this market coming down. I mean you were just looking at some levels there but you're looking at pullbacks down to what 3600. Hard to see that happening a 6% move I just can't. I can't even, can't even see it what could cause it if I'm talking if I'm thinking about let's say this week alone for example, probably the one thing. I think this would happen, but what if Biden came out and it's an absolute damp squib and it's just his proposal is just flat as a pancake and it's like it's not stimulus at all. Yeah, there's any risk that Biden could, you know, come in and do a lockdown, like a full scale one. No way. That's absolute baloney. He put that out as a political ploy just to be contradictory to what Trump was saying. Absolutely have no belief at all. If he could he not do that administering a nationwide lockdown when the US operates on a federal and state level as possible. Yeah, that's just all political gamesmanship. No, but yeah, would that impact markets. Absolutely it would. Would he do that. No, could he do that be incredibly difficult. So, yeah, I don't buy into that at all. A risk perhaps I still think the main risk here is still the virus. And the main risk on the virus then would be we're getting lots of reports about not just the spread of the UK variant but perhaps now a newly formed US type variant a mutation of your mutation. Now if that then renders vaccines redundant, we get pushed back a couple of months, which is going to impede the timings of the recovery. Then I think we get a pullback. But then the Fed come in again and start talking it up so, but that could create your 6% pullback in the interim period. And just so that that's not the base of case of what I see happening at the moment, but that can be probably the one single biggest risk to the equity space. But yeah, low probability. Cool. All right, well, and that's going to end this briefing now, but we're going to take a few questions for the guys in the Amphi live community. Thanks a lot.


Two angels approach his city and these two angels Come to spy the city see the city how it is and as they are doing that a lot comes to them And let us some out of curiosity Could you come to my house and spend the night in my house in this culture and like in many Palestinian cultures? It is the code of honor that you take a stranger into your house and you treat him With dignity and respect it was a code that they lived under and lot he subscribed to that code He welcomes a stranger into his house, but I want you to see an incident here because as lot is welcoming these strangers They are replying back to him and they're saying No, we are not Coming to your house We will stay outside because we need to check the city Thank you for the generous offer Now if lot made that generous offer just to be nice he would have said, okay, I Asked I Requested you don't want it. It's your choice Have you ever had somebody offer to pay for dinner? But they didn't want to pay for dinner. They didn't even have a wallet with them Have you ever had when you go out maybe for a group meeting and And the guy says I want to yeah, I'll take care of this But then the girl wants to test that by saying no, I got it and then the guy replies. Oh, okay. I guess Since you insist she wasn't insisting she just said she wanted to test Do you really want to pay or are you just saying it to be nice? I Wonder if that's exactly what angels did with lot I wonder if they said no just to see do you really want us to come to your house or are you bluffing? How many times we take no as an indication of this is what God wants or not instead of as a test to what you really want How many times and no is God's way of saying I want to bless you I want to use you, but I want to see how bad do you want it? And That's exactly what messengers are doing. They're saying no lot.  I was just trying to be nice in the first place I don't even care about you guys. Plus you guys probably some weirdos. I don't even did your background check I don't know who you are No, a lot insist the Bible says he's strongly Insisted I want to know I want you to know one thing about your relationship with Holy Spirit You have to learn to discern That God's nose are not always an indication of what he wants, but a test of what you really want


Let me welcome you. Welcome everybody to the Future Trans Forum. I'm delighted to see you all here today We have a great guest with an incredibly important topic We've been talking for years about the difficult What some call the iron triangle of higher education that is how can we make higher education more affordable? Also, how can we improve its quality at the same time? How can we give more and more people more and more access to it? This is not an easy thing to figure out. There's quite a bit of difficulties in doing this. In fact some call this, you know, they echo this in terms of the old quality assurance thing for engineering. You can have something that's fast, that's high quality or cheap, but you can only pick two. Now what's interesting here is that Steve Ehrman, a lifelong scholar, a lifelong activist, consultant and worker in higher education, has put together research showing schools that have managed to do all three of these at the same time, that he's been able to find campuses that have improved everything. They've improved quality and access and affordability all the same time. It's remarkable and this is an incredibly, incredibly important set of discoveries and hopefully, hopefully, we can all learn from this. I'm just going to be Jeanette Cohn right now on stage. Hello, Jeanette. You were a great guest. And nice to be here. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Can you say more about your question about what you mean or how you're hoping to help us think through the iron triangle of quality access and affordability? So that's always the question is, you know, how do we improve these three things? And one of the ways is to improve quality by making a campus less accessible and more expensive. And that's a pretty classic way forward. And we also have the ability to make something more affordable, more accessible by reducing the academic quality. So I'm just wondering where people have run into this dynamic in their own lives, in their own work.   Oh, no. Well, I look forward to hearing Steve, the expert thought on this. I guess I'll just say that attention I've noticed in quality access and affordability isn't thinking about how you measure the components of these three kind of qualities, too, right? How are you measuring quality itself? And then to what extent does the measurement of quality impact the ways that we also measure access? I think affordability is easy enough to measure, right? That's a pretty clear scale. But I think it gets hazier when thinking about, well, what does access really mean? Access to whom? Access for what? And then, again, how does quality sort of change or how does our perception of quality change when our definitions of access get either narrowed or broadened? So I don't have answers, just questions. I'll be interested in hearing Dr. Irman's thoughts on this as well. Thank you. Well, those are great questions. Thank you. And I'll let you go back to your whiteboard and bring you back up in a bit. Steve, welcome back. Thank you. It was a really terrible computer crash. So after a while, I gave up and I'm using my cell phone. I can see it's a different angle than before. But you sound good and your visual quality is great. So welcome and thank you for your flexibility. Sorry for the accident. So repeat the question again. Is it about the... I was asking everybody a question. But before I get to that question, I want to ask you just the personal question. I know you are somewhat, somewhat retired and yet you are producing a book and you're appearing to talk about this. So my question is, what are you up to for the next year? Are you going to be following this up with another book? Are you going to be, well, so you're going to be up to besides crashing computers? Well, for people who aren't familiar with what I've been doing, I need to explain that a little bit in order to make any sense at all of what it is I'm going to be doing the next year. I really got curious some years ago, often on maybe over 20 years, about the question of how quality access and affordability might relate to each other. And was it true that there was an iron triangle that made it impossible to change all three at once? Yeah. So I started looking for institutions that had some evidence that they'd gathered that they had been making improvements, at the very least in quality accessibility. And when I found my first one, I realized that by achieving gains in quality accessibility the way they had, they were also making gains in affordability. Whether the institution realized it or not, it was sort of coming along in a couple of different ways with those first two achievements. I started looking for more institutions. I felt that to have a book that was readable, I could do case histories that is the last 10 or 20 years of how each institution got to where it is today on five institutions, eventually I had to settle for six, because each one shed such a different light on the issues that we were tackling and what the possibilities were that they created. So over the next year, I'd really like to do case histories on another one to three institutions that are very different from the six that I've profiled already. So for example, I profiled only one two-year institution, but it's very unusual in both being very small and also very new. So a two-year college that's beginning to sense that they are in fact making progress in these directions. Or at least wants to talk to me about how I would suggest they discover this. That would be useful. I haven't looked at any traditional private institutions and I'm thinking particularly of institutions that are not the, you know, the Ivy League most famous of the famous because in general the highest prestige institutions are not as motivated to make these kinds of changes as institutions a notch or two below that. That is institutions with very capable people, promising activities, but without the reputation that sort of would hold them rigid because everybody would revolt at any change that was being made and how it's always been done. So whether that's working with an institution that's willing to answer a lot of questions or an institution that actually wants me to help out more substantively and trying to figure out where they are now and what next steps might be. What I'm going to do with that, I don't know yet. It would depend on what it is I'm learning. Do I try to create a handbook? Do I try to create a second book with some additional case studies that and text about, you know, what the whole framework now looks like with say nine case histories behind it rather than six. We'll just have to see what would develop. Well, I can't, I can't wait to see and to hear and if we can help, let us know. It would be really, really interesting to see. So friends, if you're new to the Future Transform, I'm just the moderator of the MC. I usually kick things off with another question, but then I get the heck out of the way and invite all of you to put forth your questions. So now that we have the author here, and we have your initial salvo of ideas, start thinking about what you'd like to ask him, for example, what use of technology, how can people use technology to try and solve that iron triangle, or what types of leadership are best qualified or best positioned to lead that kind of transformation? Or just questions about how does this even work? This seems to violate some kind of physical law. A question I'd like to ask you to begin with, Steven, is thinking about the past year and a half of the pandemic. How did the pandemic hit these strategies? Did this force any of your model institutions to change their habits in a way that returned them to the earlier problems, or were they able to persist even through COVID-19? I can say a little bit about that, but not much, because the active research phase for this book was ending about the same time the pandemic was starting. But I will say that the University of Central Florida, which has been making, is one of the two institutions that relies most on online and blended courses, has been trying to do that at scale for a very long time. So that the way that they offer courses, the skills that faculty have really pervade the institution. A rough guess would be somewhere between half and two thirds of all of the full-time faculty have already had some kind of training, not just in online, but in how you use pedagogy. I use basically the kind of same research-based insights into teaching and learning that apply both to online courses and, as it happens in a different way, to campus courses. And there had been a history already of faculty who had developed and taught online courses, then moving some of those pedagogical insights and some of those materials into campus courses, too. So they had a much less of a hill to climb. For example, there were something like 60 or 70 people in their, what I would call their teaching, learning and technology center already vastly bigger than most institutions have. I think you mentioned that UCF also has a very interesting funding model for how they fund their distance learning. Yeah, the state of Florida allows a distance learning fee to be assessed. And I'm going to get these numbers wrong probably, but as I recall, the state maximum is $14 a credit and UCF has changed at charging, I think about $9 a credit. But again, I'm going to get this number a little wrong, but something like half of all their credits are coming from online courses. So this is a big revenue stream if you think about students taking some courses, some degrees with mostly or entirely online courses. And they're a channeling, I don't know whether it's most or all of that revenue, back into making sure that this is a high quality, large scale operation. That's really, really important. That closed loop there to keep improving that. And they've been doing this since like 2000 or so. Back in the late 90s. And I think they were really, it says something about their principles as an institution that at the very time they were considering do we offer online courses at all, and what should they look like. The academic deans were agreeing that whatever they offered had to be really high quality and sort of a good fit with the campus with campus offerings in terms of their effectiveness. So they were committed to subsidizing faculty to really learn a lot about how to create courses and teach them effectively online. That's very much money put into it. I mean, right now the estimate would be that they put about $20,000 per course into the first course that a faculty member teaches online. That's a lot of support. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you. And we have already your first question and I'm going to beam the questioner up on stage. So you can see how this works. We have Tom Haymes. Hello, Tom. Hello. Well, just for that, I mean, how are you doing? Exciting display. Yes, pardon the occasional peel of thunder. We've got a thunderstorm coming in down here in Texas. Okay, so if you knock offline, we'll understand. Well, yeah. No, don't understand. Just sympathize. I'll sympathize for sure. Yes, you will. So one of the things that I'm very interested in and that I've spent a lot of time working on is, you know, to what extent does technology, particularly digital technology allow us to rethink and break up the idea of courses in the first place. The idea of, you know, what it means to teach and what it means to, what it means to teach and what it means to structure an education. Maybe it's teams of teachers and all this, this, this sorts of stuff that, you know, where space and time used to be a big barrier. One of the things we've learned with COVID is that that doesn't need to be a barrier in the same way anymore. For instance, right now this week I'm meeting individually with all of my students and I've shut down, they're all virtual anyway. I mean, it's online on a schedule. But, you know, I shut down my classes this week because I think this is a better use of my pedagogical focus this week to sit down and have a real conversation with the students to see where they are to look at what they've done and to give them a good push for the remainder of the semester. So the question I have is, to what extent have these institutions you've looked at been able to systematize this kind of rethinking of what a course even means or credit hours or these sorts of things which are a product of literally butts and seats. Have we lost Steve completely? No, I don't think so. Can he hear us or just, could I see joint podium in the middle? No, he just, there he is. Reloading. Did you hear the middle of that? Steve, were you able to hear that? It may be that his phone... I shouldn't have said anything about the storm coming in because I'm not the one who... No, he just jinxed us, I think. I jinxed Steve at least. Well, let me take a look and see if he's on here twice. It looks like no. It looks like that's actually a frozen image. Yeah, at least it's weird and strange. Steve, there he is. I had to do it twice. I heard the questions, great question. I looked at five institutions, two of which were purpose-built, created right from the first days of planning to be exceptionally effective in terms of quality access. And in the case I'm going to talk about, affordability was also an explicit goal. In fact, one of the first things they did in trying to conceptualize the institution was to decide what the tuition was going to be. And then they tried to develop an institution that could thrive at that comparatively low level of tuition. And that's what's called the College for America programs at Southern New Hampshire University. They're the only one of the six which grappled with the questions that you just raised. In fact, when they first started the program, the word course wasn't in their vocabulary. They were talking about competences to be acquired, projects to be worked on, sort of ancillary online materials that students could use to get themselves ready and an overall competence map that derives partly from the AAC and use essential learning outcomes and partly from more job-oriented competences. What they discovered was that it was very difficult to articulate with a larger system of expectations on the part of potential students and the regulatory system to not have the word course there. So they would bundle three projects together that had related competencies and they would call that a course and or three credits for it. But that's the only overlap with conventional terminology. Things never met with each other, online or face to face. The interaction was entirely or virtually entirely student to supervisor, student to coach student to counselor. And that really points out in terms of assumptions about quality and learning and so on, the big difference between college for America and the other institutions, the other five. The other five, you'd find much more familiar because they have a big emphasis and in a lot of different ways more even than traditional institutions, they take advantage of students, interaction, students working in teams on projects, peer critique of one another's work, debates, competition, simulations. But if you're a competence based institution and aren't, you know, absolutely gigantic, you're giving up most all of the possibilities for student-student interaction, which is really powerful engine for it's involved almost all the high impact practices that had been named involved some form of student-student interaction. So the claims on quality for college for America rest more on the competence definitions, on the assessments that are being made of student competences and the ability to ideally introduce students to challenges that they're just about ready to tackle. They've got to learn more, but not so much more that it would seem impossible to them. So it's a different kind of claim on what makes this kind of learning effective. And I think because college for America is kind of unique in my view, it was almost the best conceivable way to implement competence-based education that was likely to have a claim of being effective in the same ways that these other five could be because at least they had problem-based learning. Everything is about working on a project and learning what you need to do to do that project and the projects are made as real or realistic as possible and as relevant to the students work because all of these students are employed almost all the students are employed by companies that are clients of College for America. So College for America one of the other differences is they don't recruit new students. They recruit new employers and then the employers make this education available more or less as a benefit. Students may have to pay something or the students may find that their tuition benefits from the employer completely cover us. The other thing I was thinking about there was one of the big problems with the triangle is efficiency and the big cost driver in most institutions or one of the big cost drivers in a lot of institutions is the cost of faculty. Are there ways in which we can make faculty more efficient than tying them to a 16 week course with its ebbs and flows and in terms of just the way the work is structured. I find that as a faculty member there are significant chunks into the semester where I'm like yeah this is a time when I don't really need to be involved in this and I could be helping other students or I could be doing other things in the process. I could be more modular too not just the class because that's the thing I haven't looked into that too much at Central Florida but there might well be examples of that because so many faculty have had so many years getting experience teaching blended courses and online courses and developing materials that are useful online that they could well de facto be doing what you just described. I just didn't think to ask. I think that's a good question. I've actually embedded a librarian in my course on my own originally and she tackles some of the research needs that the students have and these aren't things that I can't do but it's a load that I can take off my plate so I can focus on the things that she can't do and she's physically well physically digitally in my course and can be accessed by the students anytime and she comes in and gives some guest talks over the course of the semester too or people like that and actually put together teams and if we could spread out the workload I think we could make the whole system a lot more efficient. College for America when it was designed originally they wanted a $3,500 term tuition they raised it some it's 4,000. They felt that they couldn't have a conventional faculty with and do the other things at that level so they have sort of staff experts they use a lot of ad junks for different purposes when I say adjunct I just mean somebody who's part-time either doing this as part of or on top of another job some of them are specialized as assessment people some are providing academic coaching for students one of the things that would really needs to be looked at closely in the years to come is what are the trade-offs of not having a faculty that has the responsibility and the education to guide this sort of continual redesign. Do you lose anything or gain anything by investing that in conventional staff roles where my other things obviously there's no tenure. It's a combination of things and I think you still have to have that faculty member at the center of the universe but so much of what faculty end up using their time for has absolutely nothing to do with their area of expertise and in many cases even teaching or at least not teaching what they really their areas of expertise and so it's more efficient in my mind to for me to have the librarian as it better because that's the focus of her inquiry and we could also go interdisciplinary and have teams of English professors working together with government professors to teach composition and writing in a political science context or something like that where those loads are distributed out in different ways that I think would be really effective and I think at the end of the day if you structure it right I think that would be a good possibility but I'm eating up enough time speaking of accessibility I want to give somebody else accessibility to the forum. Thank you. We'll make it more efficient for you Tom. Thank you. Thank you Brian. Don't get fried. Don't get sussed. Steve one quick question you mentioned that this one project the lack of course language was that accreditors students they were shying away from something that was so innovative they literally couldn't relate it to anything in their past experience. So it was partly the students I think the creditors to regulators were expecting to see three credits for what and if you think about it the sort of the pure learning has nothing to do with time on task. You know for this credit you may be if you already had that competence you can just put in a relatively small amount of time to demonstrate that you've got it but in order to exist sort of exist comfortably with potential students with employers and with regulators having some way of saying we're not going to talk literally about hours. Well thank you thank you I want to make sure you didn't miss that point and everybody this is again your time to ask Steve your questions and to put forth your ideas as well you saw how easy it is to ask a video question and also to ask a question by chat in fact let me just I wanted to hoist one question that came up this was about alumni I can find the source of this this is Kay Hampshire who asked how do alumni organizations impact either positively or negatively this iron triangle of accessibility quality and affordability I think it could go either way I never looked at that question so I'm just imagining it at this point but let me go back to a very basic thing which is why do people think it's an iron triangle and why are they wrong I think the intuitive idea is that quality is somehow related to the quantity and value of academic resources divided by the number of students so in that model of quality you want to maximize the time which is one of those academic resources faculty time for each student and anything about reducing that amount of time or guarantee of lowering quality in one of the most subtle and most widespread ways of reducing time for student of course is to add more students the problem is that that whole model is fallacious that isn't the way that learning happens learning results from what students do and only from what students do as Herbert Simon once said which means that you can have institutions with relatively small comparatively small amounts of resources per student where the student learning is more effective than it is in institutions with larger amounts of faculty time and other resources per student the national survey of student engagement Nessie has some research that shows that to be true and I think in different ways these institutions demonstrate that too alumni that don't react negatively to somewhat changed ideas about what class looks like and who are supportive first of all financially one of the things that I've seen for years and I spent 20 years of my career as a funder of innovations in higher education was that institutions would do some things that I thought were really spectacular in terms of improving the guts of teaching and learning in that institution and then I would look at their websites and their ways of describing themselves you know the Wikipedia article about them to choose one small example and would make no mention at all of what these pioneering practices were which meant that they were depriving getting more alumni support financial support support in terms of alumni time in terms of these scaling up new practices that's a real problem I can see that there that was a really good question thank you for adding that angle we've also had several people asking a question around quality and I want to bring up the one from John Henry Stites who asked this I'm going to dive in your initial temporary asked how quality can be measured how do any of the six institutions measure quality outside of time on task that's a that's a wonderful observation about time on task because I don't believe any of them do that and yet that's a nice evidence-based way of measuring quality is looking at time on task especially to give even a little higher and say engaged time on task the institutions I won't say they've got six different ways of measuring quality but it's more than two or three Georgia State for example thinks about quality primarily in terms of graduation rates they started this journey with graduation rates that were about six year graduation rates that were about 25% and even lower graduation rates for students for underserved groups that of African American students starting at Georgia State back in the late 90s only half of them reached the end of their freshman year and they stopped one year's oh no their measure of quality and their measure of equity are related to each other looking at the overall graduation rate and by the way this is the assumption below this I don't know if it's an assumption or fact the fact is that a lot of what Georgia State did was to try to improve teaching and learning and so therefore a lot of the credit and recent graduation rates has to do with increasingly effective instruction as well as some things that they did that are more you know student support or any kinds of steps as much as possible they were trying to improve graduation rates by improving teaching so their measure was graduation rates of that and their measure of improved equity was bringing to be the same as the students from privileged groups or more privileged groups which they've achieved they're all the way up there the Black students and Caucasian students graduated at the same rate from Georgia State and keep in mind a lot of people would assume especially in there with the old model of the Iron Triangle you would assume that anything other increase the graduation rates for white students the gap would remain but that's not what happened at Georgia State graduation rates went up some black students graduation rates went up a lot after 15 years 20 years of effort to where they're now identical that's fantastic so that's one answer to equality and Governor State and in a very different way their definition of equality would tie more to evidence-based practices high impact practices well designed ways for cumulative learning across as students progress through a degree program that one is more Governor State the teaching learning effective teaching learning practices being diffused that's more Central Florida and I've already mentioned College for America which is competencies and whether students have mastered each competence simple excuse me the College for America only has two grades if you want to call it a grade mastery or not yet students can try again do something different see if they can learn more grade mastery the second time very different sense of quality than the other institutions that's interesting not yet suggests that kind of asset based mentality you're on the way that's true I have no mastery of Korean not yet that is good there was a follow up question for this and this came up in the chat from a few people and wondering about QM and hang on one second there's some discussion about QM some QM fans so what do you think of the role of quality matters in this do these three institutions just not use QM or is that something we should think about I know Central Florida is a participant in QM and I just never looked to see whether the other five are the quality matters program has played a really positive role over the last 20 years in helping institutions and faculty connect evidence based teaching and learning practices with online learning rather than seeing online learning as a cash cow where the quality is as low as you can get away with QM has really been running counter to that and there's a lot of applause for that I will say modestly that one of the two funders that I worked for I think is I recall helped QM get started it's a great example of a small grant leading to a large scale long term change in practice QM has done a great job that's a wonderful transition to the question I was going to ask but before I do that let me just say to everybody we've got about nine minutes left so this is a great time for you to put forth your questions for Steve Ehrman about these issues if you'd like him to dive into one of these schools more closely if you'd like to address some of the other different parts and pieces of this from alumni and technology to accreditors this is your chance it's even easier still the podium here is open if you'd like to just grab that teal-colored box and start talking now while people are formulating their last questions I'd like to ask one of myself which is in the futures angle how can looking ahead say ten years what's a path forward for getting these innovative practices out into other campuses on Twitter we have one of our Scots friends said this won't happen these are pools of activity but the overall ecosystem doesn't want to change how can I prove him wrong and cheer him up and how can we get these kind of broken iron triangles out into the rest of higher education I call it rubber triangles to some extent because there's a whole, especially in this stage where I don't know, I guess 10, 15 institutions I hope I'm wrong about that I hope it's more are beginning to make progress of this sort I'm hoping that one of the messages of the book will help which is that it's likely that the large majority of institutions have made at least some progress in this direction but they just haven't realized it yet and if they begin to see that they already have assets in place things they've done either recently or things that are long term strengths of their institution they may feel it's easier to take another little step and that was one of the things that I learned from the four institutions that weren't designed from day one to be effective in these ways they started just by taking little steps which over 5, 10 years of a bigger puzzle and when they did begin to see oh, we're already part way we've already had successes we've already been seeing that it's possible and now that we can see where we are going in a more holistic way now we can really step on the gas and I think all these institutions had this sort of inflection point where they realized that they could try they could aim their sights a little higher and they could see what the other institutions that they would make it so starting small and then once you've done that successfully then realizing it and saying hey we can go even further and they're picking up the speed one of the other points that I mentioned earlier response to a question was the importance of boasting about what your institution is already doing I think the more institutions that look at this analysis and realize how important it is to improve quality not just access and not just affordability but all three and that they can do it already there are things they're already doing that they can boast more about I think that might begin to change the popular conception that's far too widespread these days that college education is a commodity where you invest as little as possible whether you are tax payers or people paying tuition or whatever in order to get the degree that it's the degree itself not the education that's what's valuable so seeing progress is being cheaper and cheaper and worse and worse education we got to get that out of the way and have institution boasting about not just how well their students are doing after graduation but what exactly emerged from the experiences that they had as students what they were able to do even in first year to working on for example real and realistic problems and making a difference and then getting better and better as evidence for example and there are e-portfolios and a lot of institutions are developing toward programmatic e-portfolios which is to say what they now do and what their intellectual capabilities are developing to become there are a lot of potential ways in which we can begin to change the consciousness of the wider world potential students, employers regulators, accreditors that were already on the way and if that begins to happen then you'll that's where you begin to see the neighborhood begin to flip in the middle of that phase change now we have to be patient I mean I think one of the biggest lessons for me having come from a grant making background I tended to see improvements in terms of two or three year time chunks and people applying for grants tend to think about what can we do in this short amount of time and then now we've got to propose something new different grant or the new provost comes in the new president comes in and said the only way we can make our contribution clear is to do something quite different from what's been going on the institutions that I study are really marked by the continuity of effort the cumulative building piece by piece of these larger constellations of institutional strengths that together improve quality access and affordability and mentality about what you're doing and that takes years to develop you know you can't say we're going to start years of patient effort today it's much better to say we started years of patient effort about five years ago here's what we've done so far now let's keep going let's keep gradually raising our sights and we're going to have a terrific answer and I want to say something about it but two questions just popped up and I want to make sure people get to ask these questions this is great Steve this comes from Charles Finley at Northeastern and Charles asks I wonder what role fraternities and sororities play in creating support and pure learning to achieve a quality experience for their members they do more than just party that's a question you need to answer to the majority across institutions the institution where I went to school as an undergraduate had a strong fraternity system and the fraternities emphasized academics that wasn't the only thing that they were doing they also were having their parties and so on but one of their selling points to potential pledges was look what we can do for you academically that's a good Again Charles, that's a really good question and that but it does break down at that small level Let's see if we can sneak in one more question under the wire another good one This comes from John Becker at VCU. Hey John and John says CFA doesn't see FAA doesn't have great graduation rates. Does that matter in the quality conversation? That's a really good question In my I don't know is the answer of John. I'm afraid the So many students are part-time at CFA And virtually all of them are holding on to holding down full-time jobs So I don't think they could be measured by the same expectations as programs that are Serving students who are On the average closer to working really full-time one thing and their competence based structure And the fact that they've torn loose from semesters Also, I think If you want to say enables encourages Students to think more in task-oriented in terms of lesson when the task is going to be complete You're ending for mastery so it took you longer. You can still hit it I think from the point of view of a college for America and Southern New Hampshire University They would say this is an asset But instead of students getting through in a minimal way and finishing up not really knowing very much That their students whenever they graduate them will be more capable Now whether they are that's still, you know, that's a long way down the road a lot of research I think and hopefully more programs than just the one college for America It's it's it's it's strengthened its weakness in terms of my Collection is that it's it's so unique. It's much more different from the norm than any of the other five even gutman is Much more like a conventional college than college for America is John that's that's very quick And Thank you for so many great answers. We're we're out of time We have to wrap things up But I wanted to thank you not only for putting up with technological problems But just for answering so honestly so deeply and so generously This is a terrific book friends. And thank you Stephen for joining us to discuss it um, let me Do people have my email? Because I want to I didn't share that Yeah, the email in the um chat room I also want to one thing that we didn't talk about um That I think people would be really interested in is um Why is it so urgent? For colleges to improve quality that part of my book is on the stylus website uh in your um pr brian for this um Uh for this webinar you include a link to the stylus page With information about my book reviews and and so on um There's a link where you can freely read chapter one Which is the chapter that lays out all the arguments for why is it so important to improve quality? Why the fact is our quality level currently far less than we think it is Um as well as the urgency of equitable access and the urgency of affordability Well Again, I second that um, those were great links and um, and you are a great guest Um, we can we hope that your next um your follow-up for this the next three or so case studies whatever form they are We really look forward to seeing them. Thank you. This has been a great I've had a great time. I don't know if you can do this, but I'd be happy to stay online Since I robbed people You didn't rob anybody I'm going to need to wrap up, but thank you. Thank you for your offer. We know how to find you. Yeah We uh friends looking ahead, uh, I just want to mention that we have a a set of uh Topics coming up including uh more and rethinking learning uh on disability and classes on eco media literacy Also, if you want to keep talking about this like how to define quality successfully What the role of quality matters is the role of alumni the role of fraternities and sororities Please tweet at us use the hashtag f tte You can tweet at me brian alexander or schindig events or hit my blog for more conversation about this If you'd like to look at our previous sessions where we've touched on different parts of this including quality Including affordability. Just head to tinyorl.com slash f t f archive We've got 275 sessions to choose from In the meantime, thank you all so much for the really really good questions and thoughts We really appreciate it. We really appreciate your patience your flexibility We can only explore the future of higher education with all of you And thank you for thinking of all of us and thinking with us until next time. Stay online and stay safe Bye. Bye