00:00So I want to focus on grad school programs, which you recently wrote about.
00:04Master's and Ph.D. programs are in even bigger trouble than college programs as a whole.
00:09Why is that?
00:10There are many factors to that, but right now chief among them is President Donald Trump.
00:13The Trump administration has been working to reshape higher education in general,
00:18but a kind of perfect storm of political threats has hit master's programs and Ph.D. programs especially hard.
00:26There's the crackdown on student visa applicants and international students
00:31who make up a disproportionate amount of grad students in this country compared to undergrads.
00:37There is the curtailing of federal research money and the huge historic uncertainty around that relationship
00:43between the federal government and research universities, which are hitting grad programs,
00:48especially hard Ph.D. programs in particular, but also master's programs, particularly in STEM fields.
00:54And then there's also new strict limits on federal lending for grad students
01:00who used to be able to borrow practically unlimited amounts of money to attend grad school
01:04and are now going to have some pretty strict new caps on that lending.
01:08And a lot of people say that it was those uncapped loans that kind of fueled the rise of grad
01:13school programs,
01:13making them the cash cow for universities.
01:15I actually recently sat down with Ken Ruggiero of Ascent Funding about student borrowing
01:19from the private loan perspective because they're a private lender.
01:22Let's take a listen.
01:24In about 50 to 75 percent of the student situation, the private sector can support the student
01:31with all the borrowing they need at rates that are either a little less than the current federal loan
01:38or a little bit higher than the federal loan.
01:40Why is there a difference in the rate that some private lenders would charge versus the federal government?
01:45The federal government doesn't pull credit.
01:48Credit is priced relative to the expectation of repayment.
01:52So when there's a high expectation of repayment, then we can give very, very low interest rates,
01:59lower than the federal government.
02:01Okay.
02:01So the economics are clearly changing for grad school.
02:04What are the schools themselves doing in response to this?
02:07How are they dealing with this?
02:08Some of the wealthiest schools are able to kind of be more flexible.
02:11And some of them are actually setting up their own federal loan programs, rather their own loan programs
02:17to replace federal lending streams.
02:19Yale did this.
02:20UPenn did this.
02:21Harvard is doing it.
02:23Others are going to be hedging by enrolling more undergraduate students, the ones that can do that,
02:29that have deep applicant pools, big brand names, money to expand physically their campuses.
02:35Columbia is doing this.
02:36The University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, other schools that don't have the same kinds
02:42of brand name recognition.
02:43They're setting up online programs, cheaper programs, and things like AI.
02:47But a lot of colleges are stretched too thin to really adapt and are going to really feel
02:52this hit them very hard financially.
02:53So while con came out of course all of this want to be done in a little bit JestÃvel
02:54they really need to make the right.
02:54Indeed, Struggling two of the best people that ask is this
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