The Great Equaliser: Building a University From the Ground Up With Mat Jacobson and Fahim Khondaker

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I've probably met two other people in my life that have established universities.
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Education is always that great equalizer.
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It's more than an equalizer.
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It actually gives you social mobility.
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What is the purpose of a university in the first place?
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Why does a university even exist?
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That's a really important question because then it kind of defines everything that that institution will do.
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Welcome back to the Mastering Podcast.
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Most of us spend our whole lives inside institutions we didn't build.
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Schools, universities, companies.
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A few people spend their lives trying to improve them.
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Almost no one builds one from scratch.
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A few weeks ago, we started a conversation about exactly that, education, and why the university model is built for a world that no longer exists.
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We ran out of road before we reached the part we're most curious about, America.
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So we promised a part two.
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This is it.
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And it lands at a moment when the value of a degree is being questioned harder than it has been in a generation.
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With me to host who pushed this episode from day one, entrepreneur, master's athlete, and chief revenue officer in global education, Mr.
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Don San Sanka.
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And joining us for the first time is Faham Kondaka, partner and data for AI at BDO, a professor of practice at the University of New South Wales, and a man whose whole life, as you'll hear today, is the clearest argument I know that education is the greatest equaliser.
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And dialing in from Los Angeles, where he's preparing for the next graduation of Kennedy University of Leadership, Matt Jacobson.
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For more than two decades, he's challenged how we think about education, leadership, and opportunity, reshaping industry-connected learning through DeSur, opening doors across Africa through DeSur Foundation, and now doing what almost no Australian entrepreneur has ever done: building a university from the ground up in America.
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Matt, welcome back to the Mastering Podcast, mate.
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Great to be here again.
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So, Matt, you partly left us building a private university in Australia, and that was almost impossible.
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Why did you go to America to build it?
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Well, yes, that's a good uh way to frame it.
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It is almost impossible to build a private university in Australia.
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Uh, there are a couple of private universities in Australia, but only a couple.
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That's quite rare.
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So, in a lot of countries around the world, in Asia, in the UK, you'll have a mix of private and public institutions.
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Um, the Australian marketplace is dominated by public institutions.
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So you're already at a disadvantage being a private institution.
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Even the ones that have been around for decades, the couple that are there, are really seen as outliers and not accepted by the university establishment.
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But in any marketplace, it's good to have competition and it's good to have variety and options.
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So having private institutions and public universities actually creates a different dynamic.
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It creates competition, but it's just not a model that really exists in Australia.
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If you wanted to do it, it would cost far too much money, um, take maybe 15 years.
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I mean, that's not something that commercial organizations typically look at a 15-year time horizon.
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Um and so the American market was attractive in terms of establishing a formal government-approved degree grant in university, but also the scale and the opportunity in the US is obviously order of magnitude different as well.
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Matt, you've had years of experience delivering um university degrees, um, but building your own university is a whole new ball game.
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Um, where do where does someone even start?
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Yeah, look, it's definitely not a common thing to do at all.
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There's uh certainly more universities, say, in the UK, than there are in Australia, and there's far more universities in the US than there are in the UK.
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Having said that, you know, I've probably met two other people in my life that have established universities, and I'm in the university industry meeting higher education people all the time.
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Um, so it's not a common thing to do for various reasons.
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But where do you start?
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Well, if you were, if I'm going to give a kind of, I guess, mentorship on how to start a university, uh, the first thing is where to start a university, and that's gonna be based on various um uh things and um criteria, I guess, and priorities that an individual might have and where they're locating students and whether they want to have a campus or online and various things.
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So there are some actually attractive EU marketplaces to establish a university or at least a higher education uh institution.
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But that's number one.
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And then once you've kind of established the jurisdiction, like you all probably know of Tex or in Australia, they're the governing body that sets the rules.
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Every country in the world has a similar body.
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So if you want to set up a university in Canada, if you want to set up a university in Ireland, there's gonna be a government regulatory body that says these are all the rules in order to become a government-approved institution.
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And those rules differ greatly by different jurisdictions.
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So it's not a kind of universal question of how do you set up a university.
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If you wanted to set up a health education institution for East Africa, that's a very different mindset to I want to set up a liberal arts college uh for undergraduate students online.
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So there's a few questions, I guess, at first around what is the goal, what is the purpose that would determine the way to do that.
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But it is uh in anywhere in the world a very difficult, challenging, regulated environment to establish an institution.
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What were your expectations going into the whole thing?
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And did you were you surprised by anything?
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Well, that's a good question.
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Like what are the expectations?
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Well, why would you do it in the first place?
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Why would you want to start a university?
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Um, you know, and you could ask that about lots of founding organizations, not that we're necessarily comparing ourselves in the same, uh, you know, in the same category, but you know, why would Uber start a ride-sharing service?
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Why would SpaceX start a rocket company?
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You know, NASA existed before SpaceX and there was taxis in every country in the world.
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So why do you need Uber?
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Um, so I guess the imperative is really are things done in a way that meets the need of the current market?
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And the answer generally is no.
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And without naming any names, these are partners of ours.
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I was talking to a big university just recently, and the dean, to give him credit, um, was talking about some frustrations within the institution and trying to get things done.
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And, you know, he gave an example, it's just what you hear all the time.
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And he said, Well, I'm trying to change something and I'm just getting resistance within the university.
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And he said, Every time I ask a question, why are we doing this?
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the answer is because that's how we've always done it.
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And that is just a terribly poor answer to a question.
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Any question that you ask should have a very logical, grounded answer, you know, that makes sense because it's an efficient way to do things, it's because it's what our customers need, um, whatever the logical commercial answer is.
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But to say, well, we do things this way because that's how we've always done it, and so we're not prepared to change, uh, is a terrible mindset.
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And unfortunately, that kind of leads into the bureaucratic mindset that you often see with particularly public institutions, but also just very large institutions.
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Doesn't matter if it's a huge hundred-year-old tech company.
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We might think tech companies are much more commercially minded and nimble.
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Well, probably on average they are.
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But if you have a hundred plus thousand employees, let me tell you, there's going to be bureaucracy and policies and red tape in that private institution as well.
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So for me, it was more about how do you design a university environment that actually meets future needs.
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And in terms of what's surprising in the process, there's a lot of inherent battle within the university sector because there's a lot of smart people in universities who want to do progressive things, but then you have regulators who, for different reasons, set up rules to try to protect students, which is a really good thing.
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But then how far does that go?
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You set up so many rules and so many common processes that you're actually stifling innovation and change.
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So having that balance between protection, consumer protections, which is important, but allowing for innovation and change is a difficult balance to manage.
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One interesting thing that you mentioned, Matt, a wise man once told me, just on just because you've been doing something your whole life, doesn't mean it's right.
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And it's 100% the amount of organizations and people I work with, their whole excuse on why they do something is just, well, that's the way that we've always done it, not actually trying to look towards something else.
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What I'm curious about, what's the biggest challenge that you went through in trying to build this university from scratch?
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So the biggest university, both externally and internally, because when you're working in a university, you're still dealing with academics, curriculum designers, instructional designers that came from a history of working within higher education and academia.
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So what attracts them to an organization like ours is that we are innovative and disruptive.
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However, they still are generally coming from that mindset of the way universities do things.
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So there's an internal and an external challenge and battle of we want to do things that genuinely move the needle on people's careers.
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And this is a whole philosophical debate.
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I know we talked about this a little bit in the last segment as well.
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But what is the purpose of a university in the first place?
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Why does a university even exist?
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That's a really important question because then it kind of defines everything that that institution will do.
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Now, most universities are not there to cater for the needs of students.
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They might say they are, but they're really not.
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Um, and everything they do shows that they're not really there in the interests of students.
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So what are they there for?
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Isn't a university there to teach students?
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No.
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A university is there oftentimes to do academic research, to publish academic journals and articles, and to be ranked from an academic perspective against their peers.
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Universities love academic rankings and moving up the academic rankings, none of which really have anything to do with student career outcomes.
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So if that's your goal, you're going on a certain tangent.
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On the other hand, if you are focused as we are on nothing other than career progression of students, we don't care about academic rankings.
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We don't care about how many journal publications an academic might publish in a year.
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What we care about in every single thing that someone in the institution does, the question is asked, how is this going to help a student get a job?
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How is this going to help a student progress in their current job?
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How is this going to help a student get a pay rise?
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Those are student-centric outcomes.
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And that is fundamentally at odds with what the majority, not all, but what the majority of universities are designed to do.
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That's not even a criticism.
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It's not a problem as long as it's transparent and disclosed.
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If a university puts its hands up, says, you know, hand on heart, we are here and our focus and our priority is on publishing and academia and textbooks and research.
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And if you like that style, come to us.
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Maybe you want to become an academic.
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Fantastic.
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But the majority of students are going to a university for a career outcome.
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If you stop any student at a campus at Macquarie University at UTS, at Monash University, Queensland University, just pull up any accounting student, grab any engineering student and say, why are you here?
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And there's not some general vague, oh, I'm looking for worldly knowledge and I want to get into academia one day.
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99% of people are saying I'm here because I'm going to get a job as an accountant, or I'm planning to get a job as an engineer.
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So is the system catering for the needs of their customer?
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Universities don't really use the term customer, but that's what they are.
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Are universities catering for the needs of their students, of their customers, or do they have their own agenda that is potentially at odds with the actual needs of what students require to progress?
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It is at odds.
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I was just gonna I was just gonna ask actually, Fahim and Don, if that's the reason that they went to university was that was a goal to you studying accounting.
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Was it always a goal to become an accountant and Don?
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To get a job?
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Yeah.
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I did accounting, finance, and economics.
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So plan was to work in the business world in some way, shape, or form.
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And those degrees seemed to ring true for me.
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So it was to get the baseline level of knowledge that I need to get a job.
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So yeah, that was definitely it.
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I think what I will say to Matt's point, though, is uh a couple of things.
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Um and for full disclosure, I am a professor at one of these larger universities in Australia as well.
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So um I don't represent the university today.
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I'm uh speaking truly on my own.
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But what I've seen, I've been there for four years now, is universities have cottoned on to that point that Matt is making, and that there has been a concerted effort to get the balance right between education and research, and at least a more dedicated focus on the education side of things.
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Um, the other thing to note as well is I think the brand helped me get a job.
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So I I was very careful about which uni I went to, knowing that if I went to uni A versus uni B, while I'll there's an element of learning things and skills, the brand and the piece of paper that would come with that uni was important to me.
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That's still relevant, the brand?
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Uh it is in the Silicon Valley.
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I don't know if you heard the story in Silicon Valley.
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So people get into Harvard, get the acceptance letter, don't actually enrol in the degree and show employers are smart enough to get into Harvard and then get the job.
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So I I know that's very prominent in in Australia as far as the private school sector goes.
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So parents are very conscious of sending their kids to a certain private school because then that can lead to a university and ultimately to a job.
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I would argue that's more the network than the university.
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I think the parents send them because they'll then form a network of friends who will be in the certain part of society and things like that.
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But I don't know.
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I don't know.
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I I'm I'm uh in two minds here.
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Now the the world's progressing really fast.
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Things are changing really quickly.
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We're still in that mindset of again, you know, our it could be our age demographic as well.
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I've spoken to a lot of recruitment agents lately, and and they don't believe that the old school methodology of um recruiting from that top 5% university model, even for the top-tier firms, exist anymore.
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I don't think it will.
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I think if NVIDIA opened a university tomorrow.
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Yeah, people will, yeah.
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And that's people would probably Matt, I think what you were talking about was that Humboldt um academic model that was built in the 1800s where they bought um research and teaching together and and created these research teaching institutes.
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Yeah.
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Um, and that model that was from the 1800s, and I don't think we've changed that.
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And that was a Oprussian model.
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Now pick on Matt's point earlier about it not being a criticism, and I 100% agree it's not a criticism.
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I think we have to acknowledge that everything we teach today and everything we do in business today came from some form of research.
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Okay, so balance scorecards, profit and loss, fraud.
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There has been a ton of research.
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We may not have used all of the research, but we've used elements of it to do what we do today.
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I agree.
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Even though you look at business learning borders five fours, it came from it.
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All of that came from research, right?
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So there is a place for research.
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But I think what Matt is saying is there is a market now where there are students who have a need that there's I think there's a huge opportunity for nimble organizations who cater just for that need um to do really well.
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And I I'm really fascinated to hear Matt's story about how he's doing it, I guess.
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I mean, there's definitely um, you know, value in research because, as you say, it leads to, you know, so many of the medicines that we might use or technologies that we use.
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But it's hard to see why teaching and research are combined.
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It's not very clear that there's a straight line between career vocational outcomes and research agendas.
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Um, and then a lot of the examples, even that you know, we were just throwing around before are international examples.
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Um and I think it is fair to criticize the Australian university research agenda, and this is maybe not a very popular uh commentary, but the fact is the amount of money that's spent on Australian research compared to the commercialisation value of that research is horrific.
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It's absolutely terrible.
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Um, no commercial business would ever um go down the path of the amount of money that's been put in, billions and billions and billions of dollars, and the incredible lack of research output and commercialization.
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Um now you do have commercialization much stronger in other markets.
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Israel is a really good example of that.
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The US, of course, is a good example.
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There's good examples out of Germany and and other European markets.
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Um, universities themselves have talked about this for decades that, oh, you know, we've got to do a lot better with commercialization and actually getting applied research as opposed as opposed to pure research.
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Now, of course, there's some examples that people throw around, but I'm talking about ROI and value for money.
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If you're investing $100 billion over X number of years and you've got, you know, five good case studies that you can point to, is that really the best use?
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Now, at the same time, you've got population that wants to increase their skills, um, their employability.
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And so is the money being spent in the right place, I think, you know, is a genuine debate, a genuine question that should be asked.
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Um, you know, there's a lot of things that are politically charged but aren't necessarily true.
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So there's a big uh decline and cut in international students.
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A lot of that is motivated by political agendas, xenophobia, because people think that foreigners are stealing Australian places.
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Now, if you speak to universities, and universities are smart and they know what they're doing, they'll say this billions of dollars in foreign students is increasing our capacity to teach more Australians.
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It's not a zero-sum game.
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It's not, there's only two seats available, so if we give them to foreigners, we can't give them to Australians.
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You've got billions of dollars in investment in infrastructure to allow for greater access.
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So I'm just throwing that out as an example of you know what is kind of the perceived issue is not necessarily what's uh what's happening.
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And the research agenda is very, very politically charged.
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It's seen as very valuable, but is it really delivering the results?
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I'm not sure.
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The US model is not a better model necessarily.
00:19:29.920 --> 00:19:32.319
There's immense challenges in the US model.
00:19:32.319 --> 00:19:33.920
But it's a different model.
00:19:33.920 --> 00:19:36.960
You do not have to do research as a university.
00:19:36.960 --> 00:19:41.359
You can be purely focused on delivering student outcomes.
00:19:41.359 --> 00:19:46.000
And you could be a university that's almost entirely focused on research output.
00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:47.039
But you've got a choice.
00:19:47.039 --> 00:19:48.559
In Australia, that doesn't exist.
00:19:48.559 --> 00:19:55.599
You have universities that are trying to enroll tens of thousands of students while simultaneously running a large research agenda.
00:19:55.599 --> 00:20:01.920
So um there should be more specialization and less commonality across all universities.
00:20:02.640 --> 00:20:06.400
Matt, just um looking at what you're doing, I I I'm just curious.
00:20:06.400 --> 00:20:14.400
I want to know why Kennedy and your first two um programs that you brought out was in in space leadership.
00:20:14.400 --> 00:20:16.960
Um, what made you go down that path?
00:20:17.440 --> 00:20:23.119
So that's an exact uh example of student-centric, career-focused outcomes.
00:20:23.119 --> 00:20:31.440
So the space sector is a massive industry, it's a growing industry, it has critical importance in the real world.
00:20:31.440 --> 00:20:34.799
I'm not talking about in research agendas, in the real world.
00:20:34.799 --> 00:20:40.000
So every phone that all of you have is using satellite and space technology.
00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:59.759
You've got farmers growing food that we all eat that is using satellite imagery for various types of topography analysis and geography and um weather patterns that use satellites for rainfall predictions and things that are critical to agriculture, critical to communications, critical to defense.
00:20:59.759 --> 00:21:03.039
But there was no course, there was no MBA in space leadership.
00:21:03.039 --> 00:21:08.480
And so you've got very, very technically bright space sector engineers.
00:21:08.480 --> 00:21:17.759
I mean, people that are a lot smarter than me designing rockets and satellites, but they could be technically brilliant and have no business knowledge whatsoever.
00:21:17.759 --> 00:21:28.319
But what I always say is, you know, being at the Kennedy Space Center and speaking there and talking to people running, say, uh building a micro satellite business, you could be building the best satellite business in the world.
00:21:28.319 --> 00:21:33.839
Sorry, you could be building the best satellite technology capability in the world.
00:21:33.839 --> 00:21:45.680
But so what if you have no business technology understanding of how to communicate, how to promote, how to raise investment, how to manage staff, how to deal with operations.
00:21:45.680 --> 00:21:50.000
All you have is a smart technology, but you don't have a business.
00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:52.319
And you want to create a business.
00:21:52.319 --> 00:22:16.880
So the space agenda was seeing an ide and identifying a gap in the market and looking at what can We do that's going to actually help entrepreneurs, startups, but even people working, you know, in very, very large government space sector agencies to think commercially and operationally about what they're doing.
00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:18.960
So that's just a good example of Kennedy University.
00:22:18.960 --> 00:22:52.319
Kennedy University is about learning from real-world leaders, billionaires, chairmen, CEOs, Nobel Prize winners, and applying that knowledge to building your own business, your own startup business, or working on strategic projects within your company, whether that's Disney or Aston Martin or PWC or Kellogg's or these various organizations we work with, whether you're actually working on internal projects for your organization that you're employed in, or whether you're building your own business, it's about practical, career-focused outcomes.
00:22:52.319 --> 00:22:54.559
And that wasn't really there.
00:22:54.559 --> 00:23:00.160
And I think it's true that yes, some universities are, you know, seeing the need to evolve and move.
00:23:00.160 --> 00:23:04.079
And they are, but it is a little bit of a snail's pace.
00:23:04.079 --> 00:23:05.920
It's like trying to move an oil tanker.
00:23:05.920 --> 00:23:08.000
So you'll have things like a capstone.
00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:09.039
Fantastic.
00:23:09.039 --> 00:23:10.160
That is great.
00:23:10.160 --> 00:23:13.599
Universities think it's really great to engage with industry.
00:23:13.599 --> 00:23:17.680
Ask any student what they thought about their capstone project in their degree.
00:23:17.680 --> 00:23:21.839
I'd be willing to bet that every student will say that was like the best thing I did in my degree.
00:23:21.839 --> 00:23:22.720
It was so cool.
00:23:22.720 --> 00:23:23.599
It was really interesting.
00:23:23.599 --> 00:23:27.119
We had to work with a real company, come up with a real solution.
00:23:27.119 --> 00:23:28.640
So that's great.
00:23:28.640 --> 00:23:33.920
But then my question is, why is that one assignment in one class in your entire degree?
00:23:33.920 --> 00:23:42.480
Why aren't you designing a degree with an apprenticeship style model where the years that you're studying are integrating with industry?
00:23:42.799 --> 00:23:49.359
So, Matt, that capstone project, is that something that's exclusive to your university or is that mainstream?
00:23:49.759 --> 00:23:49.839
No.
00:23:49.839 --> 00:24:02.720
So what I'm saying is capstones are very familiar to universities: UNSW, Monash University, Yale, Harvard, UCLA, they'll probably all have capstones in various programs that they have.
00:24:02.720 --> 00:24:10.559
But if you're doing a three-year degree, you'll probably have a capstone project in your entire degree.
00:24:10.559 --> 00:24:19.119
So, like usually in your final year and in one of your classes, maybe there's a capstone project and you're working on a cool project with Coca-Cola or the UN.
00:24:19.119 --> 00:24:25.279
And that real-world integration, students really thrive and like it and can see the value and the benefit.
00:24:25.279 --> 00:24:27.359
So they'll talk very highly of that.
00:24:27.359 --> 00:24:45.359
But then for the rest of the classes, I was literally speaking to someone at a Canadian airline this week, and they said they started an MBA, they're an alumni of ours now, and they said they started a program in Canada, and the first class they were required to get a textbook that was published in 1990, and they dropped out, like within the first week or two.
00:24:45.359 --> 00:24:50.000
They said, I'm not staying in a university that's telling me I need to buy a textbook from 1990.
00:24:50.000 --> 00:25:01.200
Um, and so that's the I guess challenge that there's little bits of we need to be more connected, but it's not a token connection or a small connection.
00:25:01.200 --> 00:25:13.759
It needs to be designed in the way medical schools think about their degrees when they're training doctors, which is a complete integration with a hospital and hands-on practical training.
00:25:13.759 --> 00:25:19.359
That happens in hospitals, it should be happening across the entire university spectrum.
00:25:19.680 --> 00:25:22.880
I'm keen to hear Fahim's thoughts around that, around the capstone project.
00:25:22.880 --> 00:25:24.480
Is that something that you're involved in?
00:25:24.480 --> 00:25:27.680
And is there anything that you're involved in currently as a professor?
00:25:28.079 --> 00:25:36.640
Look, so my role is to actually help the university adapt to the impact of AI and see what we need to do to change all of our degrees in the business school.
00:25:36.640 --> 00:25:38.640
And I'm actually quite heavily involved in that.
00:25:38.640 --> 00:25:47.599
And everything Matt's saying is on the agenda in terms of the concerns and making sure we deliver value to our students and um as well.
00:25:47.599 --> 00:25:51.759
Um from the capstein perspective, there's various models going around.
00:25:51.759 --> 00:26:04.319
There's another version called a co-op model or integrated real-life learning models, where you go and do like 12 months of your work at an employer and you kind of do your studies on the side kind of thing for those 12 months.
00:26:04.319 --> 00:26:06.000
Various universities are trying this.
00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:11.279
And but as Matt said, I think it's on the agenda, but you are kind of restrained to the system, right?
00:26:11.279 --> 00:26:16.960
Like there's it's not just you and I having a great idea today, and we could be the dean, it doesn't matter.
00:26:16.960 --> 00:26:19.519
Like there's a bigger system at play here.
00:26:19.519 --> 00:26:28.640
There's regulators, there's brand, there's culture, there's just so much in place that when you do make the changes, it'll take a while to go through that process.
00:26:28.640 --> 00:26:34.160
And that's probably the advantage, and that's probably why Matt's sitting in America and we're sitting here in Brisbane right now.
00:26:34.240 --> 00:26:39.440
Aaron Powell So is that is that bureaucratic model is that gonna hinder us?
00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:45.440
Because you know, universities are fundamental to creating the future of the Australian talent.
00:26:45.440 --> 00:26:52.559
Um and and to a greater extent global talent, like at what point do we run this?
00:26:52.960 --> 00:27:00.480
So I think yes and no in the sense that to Matt's point, uh, if there's opportunities for people who want to try nimble stuff to do well, then no.
00:27:00.480 --> 00:27:04.400
If we're restricting them out and if we're restricting innovation, then yes.
00:27:04.400 --> 00:27:07.119
So the example I'll give is we mentioned Uber earlier, right?
00:27:07.119 --> 00:27:12.799
So Uber came in, decided to break every law under the sun and just in the name of convenience sell something to us, right?
00:27:12.799 --> 00:27:14.799
And we all saw, yep, this is a benefit.
00:27:14.799 --> 00:27:19.200
The bureaucracy of taxis, uh the regulation of taxis, all that was a problem.
00:27:19.200 --> 00:27:21.839
Here's a much better model that works for us, right?
00:27:21.839 --> 00:27:28.480
The one thing that we all don't know is taxis are regulated to offer a certain number of taxis at 2 a.m.
00:27:28.480 --> 00:27:29.839
in the morning on the road.
00:27:29.839 --> 00:27:38.799
So for safety reasons, if any of us are stuck on the street or something, taxis are regulated to have a certain number of taxis on the road, even though it's not commercial to do so.
00:27:38.799 --> 00:27:40.640
Uber will never do that.
00:27:40.640 --> 00:27:48.160
So in the name of convenience and nimbleness, we've lost a public safety device, or they'll surge price it to the point where it's pointless, right?
00:27:48.160 --> 00:27:50.559
So we we gotta get the right balance.
00:27:50.559 --> 00:27:58.400
And I think I tend to agree with Matt that as long as there's opportunities for people to try innovation and be innovative, I think Australia will be fine.
00:27:58.400 --> 00:28:00.319
It's just where we get that right or not.
00:28:00.559 --> 00:28:05.599
Yeah, regulation is important and you've got to always protect that side of it by doing it right.
00:28:05.599 --> 00:28:09.200
And and I guess that's where the challenge comes in, especially in Australia.
00:28:09.519 --> 00:28:11.119
I think we just need honest advocacy.
00:28:11.119 --> 00:28:13.920
I think and if your advocacy and Matt, you can listen to Matt, right?
00:28:13.920 --> 00:28:17.440
Like he's talking about the student and the job, he's not talking about himself, right?
00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:19.759
Like it's like we just need honest advocacy.
00:28:19.759 --> 00:28:24.960
As long as we have honest advocacy and we as a society can have a broad open discussion about it, that'll be fine.
00:28:24.960 --> 00:28:32.400
But unfortunately, we live in a world that's so polarized and the internet is so polarized, you can't have a nuanced conversation where we could both be right.
00:28:32.559 --> 00:28:34.160
Um, that is absolutely a challenge.
00:28:34.160 --> 00:28:42.799
And I think Uber's a fascinating example because yes, it was super disruptive and they basically displaced the entire taxi industry almost everywhere in the world.
00:28:42.799 --> 00:28:46.160
Now, nothing in what I just said says that that's a good thing.
00:28:46.160 --> 00:28:49.599
It just is factual about they displaced the taxi industry.
00:28:49.599 --> 00:28:52.799
There's a lot of very bad things about that displacement.
00:28:52.799 --> 00:28:56.640
It used to be that if you were a taxi driver, you had to be registered, you have to be licensed.
00:28:56.640 --> 00:28:58.480
Now, who's picking you up in an Uber?
00:28:58.480 --> 00:28:59.519
God knows who's picking you up.
00:28:59.519 --> 00:29:03.359
You've got no idea, it's just some dude that decided to download the Uber app.
00:29:03.359 --> 00:29:19.279
And then you've got all sorts of like legal harassment claims and sexual harassment claims and safety issues, and um, so just kind of throwing out the regulations, like you were saying for him, about well, they just bypassed all the laws and just came in kind of and just took over the market.
00:29:19.279 --> 00:29:20.319
Is that a good thing?
00:29:20.319 --> 00:29:22.240
Well, there's a lot of problems with that.
00:29:22.240 --> 00:29:29.599
So you've got a lot of issues on the university side of being overly bureaucratic and overly regulated and stifling innovation.
00:29:29.599 --> 00:29:34.319
You can't just throw the baby out with the bathroom and say, oh, it's a free-for-all, everyone do whatever they want then.
00:29:34.319 --> 00:29:54.640
It's got to be that balance of how do you protect individuals and consumers and think about things like safety, and there's consumer protection laws and all sorts of things that are really good and have a need, but not to the extent that you're actually going to live in a bureaucratic environment where you can't have innovation.
00:29:54.640 --> 00:29:57.920
So I think that's the balance that is really challenging.
00:29:57.920 --> 00:30:01.440
And the balance isn't just putting the blame on the government.
00:30:01.440 --> 00:30:07.119
Um, it is honestly at the university level and the government, because there's so much bureaucracy within a university.
00:30:07.119 --> 00:30:11.759
Now, in the US, for example, you do a bachelor's degree, just giving you an example.
00:30:11.759 --> 00:30:19.680
If you do a bachelor's degree, it's not a university decision, it's a regulatory requirement that you have to do general education, right?
00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:22.480
You've got to do history classes and maths classes.
00:30:22.480 --> 00:30:28.720
Now we would sit there and think, well, hang on, if you're going to teach a graphic designer, why would you make them do a history class and a math class?
00:30:28.720 --> 00:30:29.759
It makes no sense.
00:30:29.759 --> 00:30:32.640
Just focus on the career outcome.
00:30:32.640 --> 00:30:35.920
But they're the rules, and you can't get around those rules.
00:30:35.920 --> 00:30:44.640
So then we go to the regulators and we say, okay, well, if you have to do maths, can we do a class on business statistics?
00:30:44.640 --> 00:30:46.640
So we can kind of make it math but relevant.
00:30:46.640 --> 00:30:48.720
They're like, yeah, that's fine, you can do that.
00:30:48.720 --> 00:30:55.440
So there is a way, if you're actually thinking about how you can design a better system and you have a will to do it.
00:30:55.440 --> 00:31:00.640
On the other hand, if your mindset is, oh, that's the way we've always done it, you're never going to change anything.
00:31:00.640 --> 00:31:06.079
So it's a little bit of a cop-out to just say, oh, we're our hands are tied and we can't do it.
00:31:06.079 --> 00:31:12.880
Um, the regulators are actually often quite practical and have logical reasons why the regulations are there.
00:31:12.880 --> 00:31:20.480
So if you can demonstrate, look, I understand the rule is X, we can still meet the requirements of the rule, but do it in this way, and this is why this way would be better.
00:31:20.480 --> 00:31:23.759
It's like, oh, okay, yeah, I guess that would work.
00:31:23.759 --> 00:31:27.920
So there's uh, you know, some definitely harder thinking that's needed there.
00:31:28.240 --> 00:31:31.039
What was the personal toll in doing this?
00:31:31.039 --> 00:31:36.720
Um, we talked a little bit about your childhood in the last episode and your entrepreneurial drive.
00:31:36.720 --> 00:31:39.839
What was the personal toll for you moving to the US?
00:31:39.839 --> 00:31:42.319
It's not just moving to another town, right?
00:31:42.559 --> 00:31:43.279
Yeah, right.
00:31:43.279 --> 00:31:45.279
Um no, I wouldn't say it's a personal tall.
00:31:45.279 --> 00:31:46.799
I mean, you can probably see my background here.
00:31:46.799 --> 00:31:52.799
I'm not gonna sit here and complain while I came from Melbourne and it's I don't know, 11 degrees probably and raining right now.
00:31:54.160 --> 00:31:57.279
In the background, what's that pink thing that's sticking up?
00:31:57.279 --> 00:31:58.079
Yeah.
00:31:58.079 --> 00:32:01.039
So we've all been we've all been very curious about sitting here.
00:32:01.039 --> 00:32:01.920
What is it?
00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:03.839
I'm not gonna tell you what I think.
00:32:04.240 --> 00:32:14.000
So that is a that is technically a flamingo that's floating around on the water uh over there, and that's a Santa Monica.
00:32:14.000 --> 00:32:18.799
Yes, it's the uh pink flamingo with the Santa Monica Mountains behind there.
00:32:18.799 --> 00:32:27.920
So this is a beautiful part of uh California, Santa Monica Mountains, there's hiking trails right there, and yeah, it's really beautiful.
00:32:27.920 --> 00:32:33.200
So, yes, it's a definite challenge like for anyone that's migrated to a different country.
00:32:33.200 --> 00:32:51.200
That's not an easy thing to do, you know, dealing with visas and government and migration and those sorts of processes, and then on top of that, dealing with family and schools and changing schools for kids and um and then dealing with setting up of a university, it's challenging, but I wasn't forced into doing it, right?
00:32:51.200 --> 00:32:55.759
So I'm doing it because for me it's exciting and it's a challenge and it's interesting.
00:32:55.759 --> 00:33:11.759
And I think as an entrepreneur, you know, and I think all of us around this table, uh virtually for me and physically around the table with you guys, um, I think we all have an entrepreneurial mindset, and entrepreneurs like a challenge, and what's the next challenge?
00:33:11.759 --> 00:33:13.440
We don't like complaints, oh, this is easy.
00:33:13.440 --> 00:33:17.200
I just turn up and I just fill in these forms every day and I can go home.
00:33:17.200 --> 00:33:19.680
That's not an entrepreneurial mindset.
00:33:19.680 --> 00:33:22.079
You're just too bored that you just can't do it anymore.
00:33:22.079 --> 00:33:27.599
You've got to find something that's the next big thing that's interesting to look into and work on.
00:33:27.599 --> 00:33:31.359
So I wouldn't necessarily look at it as a toll personally.
00:33:31.359 --> 00:33:32.799
Are there challenges?
00:33:32.799 --> 00:33:34.079
Oh, absolutely.
00:33:34.079 --> 00:33:44.400
You know, every step of the way, there's various challenges that we could go into in kind of every aspect of building a university, but overall, uh, it's a really exciting dynamic.
00:33:44.400 --> 00:33:55.839
And when you talk to students who, you know, honestly, we have students doing online degrees that are fully blind, like 100% vision impaired, not partially, 100% vision impaired.
00:33:55.839 --> 00:34:00.799
Um, we have students with various types of learning disabilities that said they tried other universities.
00:34:00.799 --> 00:34:09.119
There's no way they could ever have graduated, they failed three times until they found our university and their dream of a degree finally came true.
00:34:09.119 --> 00:34:12.559
A student in Australia just got accepted into a PhD program.
00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:17.840
They did a bachelor with us, they did a master's with us, they've just been accepted into a PhD.
00:34:17.840 --> 00:34:23.519
Um, and this woman sent me an amazing like letter of thank you saying I never would have even got my bachelor's.
00:34:23.519 --> 00:34:26.000
So this is exciting, is what I'm saying.
00:34:26.000 --> 00:34:38.320
You're genuinely helping people get that degree that helps transform their lives, which kind of gets back to the question of if we want to dive into that, is why do you even need a university and why do you need a degree?
00:34:38.320 --> 00:34:40.400
Why can't you just get the skill and do the work?
00:34:40.400 --> 00:34:43.519
That's kind of a whole really interesting debate in itself.
00:34:43.519 --> 00:34:47.199
But in that context, it was like, this degree changed my life.
00:34:47.199 --> 00:34:49.199
Like, how awesome that we can be a part of that.
00:34:49.440 --> 00:35:01.679
Speaking about transformation and challenges, I'm I'm actually keen to hear from Fohim because I think my understanding is you've gone from a school with no running water to one of the most resourced in the country.
00:35:01.679 --> 00:35:10.480
And also you, Don, coming from a background in Sri Lanka to Australia, what was that transition and what were those challenges like?
00:35:10.880 --> 00:35:18.960
Yeah, um the good news was uh I can't claim the poverty side of it because my dad was a doctor while I was going through that, right?
00:35:18.960 --> 00:35:22.639
So it's not like I experienced poverty, I just saw it around me.
00:35:22.639 --> 00:35:23.119
Okay.
00:35:23.119 --> 00:35:28.079
Uh so my dad was born in Bangladesh, I'm born in Bangladesh as well.
00:35:28.079 --> 00:35:31.119
And dad probably hit had the poverty story, right?
00:35:31.119 --> 00:35:39.760
Remote village in Bangladesh, grew up, studied, ended up studying medicine, got the scholarships and all those sorts of things, and then applied all over the world for jobs.
00:35:39.760 --> 00:35:45.360
And I think he graduated in 1981, and then 12 years later, he got a job in South Africa.
00:35:45.360 --> 00:35:47.679
And South Africa had apartheid at the time.
00:35:47.679 --> 00:35:50.960
So apart Nelson Mandela, I think, became president in 94.
00:35:50.960 --> 00:35:57.760
So we had about one year when white South Africa and non-white South Africa was basically separate countries, effectively.
00:35:57.760 --> 00:36:02.000
And so dad's job was only in a part of South Africa called Transkai.
00:36:02.000 --> 00:36:05.199
And it was like this remote village, right?
00:36:05.199 --> 00:36:10.000
Uh, like I think it was 40 met 40 minutes of gravel road before we got to our house, right?
00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:12.559
And dad was the doctor at the local hospital there.
00:36:12.559 --> 00:36:15.119
And there was only one school in that tiny little village.
00:36:15.119 --> 00:36:18.800
And fun fact, uh, Nelson Mandela's village home was 20 minutes down the road.
00:36:18.800 --> 00:36:23.039
So my parents actually got to meet him before he became president as well, which is pretty cool.
00:36:23.039 --> 00:36:30.320
Um, and yeah, so there was one tiny school just down the road from home, uh, four classrooms, no running water.
00:36:30.320 --> 00:36:33.840
Well, I think there was a tap, but that's what it no sinks or anything like that.
00:36:33.840 --> 00:36:35.840
And no flushing toilets, definitely.
00:36:35.840 --> 00:36:37.039
I still remember vividly.
00:36:37.039 --> 00:36:39.119
It's just holes in the ground, basically.
00:36:39.119 --> 00:36:40.880
Um, and yeah, that was it.
00:36:40.880 --> 00:36:43.280
That was the world I grew up in for one year.
00:36:43.280 --> 00:36:46.159
I went to uh got exposed to that schooling system.
00:36:46.159 --> 00:36:50.559
I got to see what forced disadvantage looks like uh on you.
00:36:50.559 --> 00:36:52.559
It wasn't no one was there by choice.
00:36:52.559 --> 00:36:55.599
It was that was all that was was available.
00:36:55.599 --> 00:36:57.760
Uh, but what stood out were the teachers.
00:36:57.760 --> 00:37:03.760
Like the teachers dedicated their time to make sure these kids had a hope in life, right?
00:37:03.760 --> 00:37:04.719
And including myself.
00:37:04.719 --> 00:37:05.920
They adapted for me.
00:37:05.920 --> 00:37:14.239
I turned up from Bangladesh at the age of six, couldn't speak English, couldn't communicate at all, and they just accommodated to fit me in.
00:37:14.320 --> 00:37:16.320
And we've got something in common there.
00:37:16.320 --> 00:37:24.239
So I'd migrated from Sweden to Australia and got jumped straight into grade one in the middle of the year and couldn't speak a word of English.
00:37:24.320 --> 00:37:25.599
So how long did it take you?
00:37:25.840 --> 00:37:28.000
And oh I don't know.
00:37:28.000 --> 00:37:31.039
I have no vivid recollection of that.
00:37:31.039 --> 00:37:41.199
But I think that some of the challenges that I had gone through in those early years, you know, potentially that didn't give me the the best appetite for education.
00:37:41.199 --> 00:37:49.599
But I'm curious, when you arrived in Australia, where did you land and what schools did you go to?
00:37:49.840 --> 00:37:51.760
Yeah, uh so there's just one more story there.
00:37:51.760 --> 00:37:56.639
When South Africa became South Africa, we then moved to the better part of South Africa.
00:37:56.639 --> 00:38:06.559
So my school went from four classrooms, one with a broken window, to a school with 16 rugby fields, Olympic star swimming pool, athletics track, astroturf hockey field.
00:38:06.559 --> 00:38:09.199
Well, in the space of 13 months, right?
00:38:09.199 --> 00:38:10.559
So that was the switch.
00:38:10.559 --> 00:38:18.639
And it would be like any other private school you can think of, built in 1858, traditional rugby school produced sports stars, yadda yadda yadda.
00:38:18.639 --> 00:38:21.440
Tony Gregg, the Australian cricket commentator, went to my school.
00:38:21.440 --> 00:38:23.360
So uh that's our claim to fame.
00:38:23.360 --> 00:38:23.920
Essentially.
00:38:24.639 --> 00:38:25.679
Two claims to fame.
00:38:25.679 --> 00:38:26.079
Okay.
00:38:26.880 --> 00:38:30.320
Um, so I was there till about halfway through year 11.
00:38:30.320 --> 00:38:32.960
Uh, and I my parents decided to move to Australia.
00:38:32.960 --> 00:38:35.760
So we ended up in Mackay in central Queensland.
00:38:35.760 --> 00:38:41.360
And um, and I went to a small private school there, uh class of 50 in grade 12, and it was really lovely.
00:38:41.360 --> 00:38:50.159
Uh it was my first co-ed school as well, so I got to learn about co ed uh as well, because in South Africa it is an all-boys school, and so yeah, so that was my schooling, I guess.
00:38:50.159 --> 00:38:50.880
Great story.
00:38:51.119 --> 00:38:56.000
I've got to say as well, I I never really I I can't claim to have grown in poverty.
00:38:56.000 --> 00:38:57.760
I had I was quite fortunate.
00:38:57.760 --> 00:39:08.800
Um I've done a couple of degrees, but one thing I've got to always say is when, you know, I've I've lived around poverty and um you know the great division between the rich and the poor.
00:39:08.800 --> 00:39:13.119
Um education is always that great equalizer.
00:39:13.119 --> 00:39:15.280
Like anyone has an opportunity.
00:39:15.280 --> 00:39:19.599
I think you know you're you are you know you are who you are in a lucky country.
00:39:19.840 --> 00:39:22.000
So I thought sport was a great equalizer.
00:39:22.320 --> 00:39:22.480
It is.
00:39:22.880 --> 00:39:23.519
It is as well.
00:39:24.159 --> 00:39:28.480
It gives you the opportunity, but it doesn't give everyone with a I guess it's the same thing as well.
00:39:28.480 --> 00:39:40.239
You're your whether your mental strength or physical strength, whatever it is, um, if you can put it into practice effectively and consistently, you have an opportunity to sort of rise above the rest.
00:39:40.239 --> 00:39:47.199
Well, and that's where I think education, institutionalized or not, gives you that opportunity to demonstrate.
00:39:47.679 --> 00:39:50.559
I think it's more than an equalizer, it actually gives you social mobility.
00:39:50.559 --> 00:39:55.199
You get to leave whatever is destined for you at one level, right?
00:39:55.199 --> 00:39:57.039
Um You obviously have to work harder.
00:39:57.039 --> 00:39:59.679
There's people who will have more advantage than you and things like that.
00:39:59.679 --> 00:40:02.320
But at the very least, it gives you an opportunity to get on.
00:40:02.320 --> 00:40:04.239
My dad's the best example of it, probably.
00:40:04.559 --> 00:40:05.920
Do you agree with that, Matt?
00:40:06.239 --> 00:40:07.679
Yeah, look, absolutely.
00:40:07.679 --> 00:40:13.440
And that comes back to the question, I think, of why a university and why do you need a degree?
00:40:13.440 --> 00:40:18.400
And it's because it does allow for social mobility in a way that nothing else does.
00:40:18.400 --> 00:40:23.440
Um, so you know, hats off to people who want to be a professional soccer player.
00:40:23.440 --> 00:40:26.320
You know, we're all probably watching the World Cup right now.
00:40:26.320 --> 00:40:31.039
Um, you want to be uh, you know, a professional athlete like Don.
00:40:31.039 --> 00:40:34.400
Um, you want to be a singer or an actor.
00:40:34.400 --> 00:40:35.440
Fantastic.
00:40:35.440 --> 00:40:36.400
That's great.
00:40:36.400 --> 00:40:38.000
But let's be realistic.
00:40:38.000 --> 00:40:41.280
You know, one in a million kind of make it to the big leagues.
00:40:41.280 --> 00:40:48.480
Um, but anyone really can get access to higher education, and really pretty much anyone can if they want to.
00:40:48.480 --> 00:40:57.199
Of course, cost is a barrier and other things, but if you have a desire to get a degree, there are scholarships, there are programs, there are support initiatives.
00:40:57.199 --> 00:41:07.679
If you are really determined, you will, like for him, I don't know, your dad's situation, but you said came up probably from a poor, you know, village in Bangladesh and became a medical doctor.
00:41:07.679 --> 00:41:11.599
Um, you can do it if you are determined enough.
00:41:11.599 --> 00:41:19.760
And the reason I say that is such an equalizer, so I totally agree with what everyone's saying, is you just have to look at the stats.
00:41:19.760 --> 00:41:23.039
You know, we can all talk about, oh, you know, should you waste time going to university?
00:41:23.039 --> 00:41:25.039
It's gonna take years, is it really worth the investment?
00:41:25.039 --> 00:41:26.000
Blah, blah, blah.
00:41:26.000 --> 00:41:28.719
Um, these stats are everywhere across the board.
00:41:28.719 --> 00:41:38.559
Look at the Australian Bureau of Labour and they'll say if you have a bachelor's degree over no degree, you're gonna earn more than $1 million over your career lifetime than having no degree.
00:41:38.559 --> 00:41:39.679
That's a lot of money.
00:41:39.679 --> 00:41:45.679
If you're in the US and you have a master's degree, on average, this is averages, doesn't mean it's gonna apply the same for everyone.
00:41:45.679 --> 00:41:53.519
You're gonna earn between 75 and 77% more annual income by not having than someone that doesn't have a master's degree.
00:41:53.519 --> 00:41:56.880
So those credentials are really important.
00:41:56.880 --> 00:42:01.039
And if you want to access a degree, there are ways to do it.
00:42:01.039 --> 00:42:08.719
And I know that kind of might sound too easy and people, oh, it's really hard and it's really expensive, and you're not understanding the difficulties that some people face.
00:42:08.719 --> 00:42:10.159
I do understand the difficulties.
00:42:10.159 --> 00:42:20.639
Firstly, I didn't grow up, you know, in a wealthy environment at all, even in the US, which is not arguably certainly the most expensive higher education jurisdiction by far.
00:42:20.639 --> 00:42:26.079
There's still community colleges which are virtually free that you can go and study.
00:42:26.079 --> 00:42:35.519
So there is a way if you're determined to get it, and it is the number one most guaranteed way to get a better job and get a better income.
00:42:36.239 --> 00:42:37.920
Let's talk about AI.
00:42:37.920 --> 00:42:44.559
At the moment, we're looking at how that's going to change the university system.
00:42:44.559 --> 00:42:56.239
If a machine can write the assignment, the essay, where does that leave the the the certification of a degree?
00:42:56.239 --> 00:42:58.400
Where do you think that's uh taking us?
00:42:58.400 --> 00:43:02.559
And what's the future of university degrees in amongst AI?
00:43:02.559 --> 00:43:08.559
I'm really curious to hear from Fahim on this one because he's a a professor in the subject.
00:43:10.159 --> 00:43:12.480
Look, you could cheat before AI.
00:43:12.480 --> 00:43:15.199
You could get your big brother to do your assignment for you as well.
00:43:15.199 --> 00:43:18.719
So that's for cheap labor, right?
00:43:18.719 --> 00:43:19.679
So that's always been there.
00:43:19.679 --> 00:43:22.000
Like I know everyone suddenly thinks, oh, now they're going to cheat.
00:43:22.000 --> 00:43:24.559
I'm like, if they wanted to cheat, they could have cheated, right?
00:43:24.559 --> 00:43:27.199
It's five bucks to get an assignment done overseas, right?
00:43:27.199 --> 00:43:34.480
Like so well, having said that, the temptation to obviously take a shortcut, just not in university, in our lives, right now.
00:43:34.480 --> 00:43:42.719
Those of us who are using AI right now in our daily lives to do that cognitive offloading of, oh, I'll just let AI do that.
00:43:42.719 --> 00:43:46.480
At some point that's going to have a price to pay for ourselves as well, right?
00:43:46.480 --> 00:43:50.320
So if we don't use a certain muscle too often, it'll go, right?
00:43:50.320 --> 00:43:59.039
Um look, the way most universities that I'm talking to and seeing talk about it, um, we're looking at assessing the thinking rather than necessarily the output.
00:43:59.039 --> 00:44:04.880
So the answers are Important, but how you got to the answer and whether you got the answer and the thinking of it is important.
00:44:04.880 --> 00:44:14.079
Um there will be, I'm sure, certain things where we'll probably assess without AI as well, uh, just to see if you understand the topic.
00:44:14.079 --> 00:44:15.840
Um, but that won't be the objective.
00:44:15.840 --> 00:44:25.840
I think the majority of the people are aiming towards how can I integrate AI and transform how I assess what I assess, um, rather than leave it how it is.
00:44:25.840 --> 00:44:29.039
Now, the hack way, I I keep saying this as a bit of a joke.
00:44:29.039 --> 00:44:31.679
The easiest way to hack this is to change the pass mark.
00:44:31.679 --> 00:44:33.599
So the average pass mark right now is 50%.
00:44:33.599 --> 00:44:37.199
We could make the pass mark 90% as an overnight hack, right?
00:44:37.199 --> 00:44:48.559
If we wanted a shortcut band-aid, rip the band-aid solution, the new pass mark is 90% because I know you're going to upload this assignment into AI and I'll be able to judge it and I'll assess it on a 90% threshold.
00:44:48.559 --> 00:44:48.960
Okay.
00:44:48.960 --> 00:44:51.360
Uh, that's obviously not the long-term solution.
00:44:51.360 --> 00:44:59.280
This real solution is let me change my assignment in a way where I'm assessing your thinking rather than the output itself.
00:44:59.599 --> 00:45:03.280
How do you build a university in a post-AI world?
00:45:03.280 --> 00:45:06.320
I think that's the most important part, right?
00:45:06.320 --> 00:45:09.840
How do you now build a university in this world?
00:45:11.519 --> 00:45:11.760
Okay.
00:45:11.760 --> 00:45:14.559
How many hours did you say we've got for this podcast?
00:45:14.559 --> 00:45:20.880
Um so uh that's like a lot, a lot that uh we could be talking about.
00:45:20.880 --> 00:45:25.599
But I think everything that Fahim said is just absolutely spot on, totally agree with.
00:45:25.599 --> 00:45:32.559
Um so from an AI perspective, you know, and what you said, you know, Don as well, you can always cheat before, right?
00:45:32.559 --> 00:45:35.840
You just pay someone to do your assignment, get your brother to do your assignment.
00:45:35.840 --> 00:45:44.000
But I think a bigger question is do you lean into technology, embrace technology, and utilize where the future is going, or do you try to bury your head in the sand?
00:45:44.000 --> 00:45:52.639
So better examples are things like use of a scientific calculator, or things like the use of computers when computers became mainstream.
00:45:52.639 --> 00:45:54.960
So this is technology that's there.
00:45:54.960 --> 00:46:00.719
Do we want to say you're not allowed to use that technology and we're gonna kind of live in the Stone Ages and pretend that technology doesn't exist?
00:46:00.719 --> 00:46:05.119
Or do we think how do we actually utilize that technology because it's there and it's real?
00:46:05.119 --> 00:46:15.920
So you think about scientific calculators, if a university said, no, we want to pretend that doesn't exist and we're gonna just make people do manual calculations, we'd just be reciting multiplication tables still at university.
00:46:15.920 --> 00:46:21.039
But scientific calculators allow us to do much more complex mathematics.
00:46:21.039 --> 00:46:26.880
So, how do you use the technology as a tool and embrace to go further?
00:46:26.880 --> 00:46:29.599
And then you've got an arms race situation going on.
00:46:29.599 --> 00:46:34.000
So, of course, you've got, you know, kids that think, well, we could just put this in AI and get an assignment done.
00:46:34.000 --> 00:46:35.280
Well, great, that's easy.
00:46:35.280 --> 00:46:38.079
And yeah, you can just hand in your assignment, you don't have to do any work.
00:46:38.079 --> 00:46:51.840
The problem is universities are also smart, so they've got tools and technologies to detect if something is just created by AI, but then the kids outsmart that technology and then they can kind of figure out a way to get around it, and then the technology gets better.
00:46:51.840 --> 00:46:54.079
So it's a constant arms race.
00:46:54.079 --> 00:47:08.000
But again, reiterating what Fahim said, the thinking needs to be around how do you design assignments and processes that use the technology, understand that the technology is there, but you can't just cheat and get your AI to do everything.
00:47:08.000 --> 00:47:14.960
You have to still be able to understand the concepts and explain the concepts and talk about their underpinning theory and whatever.
00:47:14.960 --> 00:47:16.559
So there's great ways to do that.
00:47:16.559 --> 00:47:17.440
Really easy.
00:47:17.440 --> 00:47:24.559
You can hand in an assignment and get a 50%, 80%, whatever, but okay, maybe you have to talk about it for five minutes.
00:47:24.559 --> 00:47:25.599
So explain to me.
00:47:25.599 --> 00:47:28.800
When you said point three, blah, blah, blah, what did you mean by that?
00:47:28.800 --> 00:47:30.159
And wouldn't this be a better way to do it?
00:47:30.159 --> 00:47:37.119
Now, if you just put an assignment into AI, you're gonna sit there basically, you know, like a stunned mullet and just not be able to even answer the question.
00:47:37.119 --> 00:47:39.679
If you're well, let me explain to you on point three.
00:47:39.679 --> 00:47:43.119
Um, initially the research was saying X, so I thought I was going in this direction.
00:47:43.119 --> 00:47:44.880
Okay, this person knows what they're talking about.
00:47:44.880 --> 00:47:46.880
They've analyzed it, they've listened, they've researched.
00:47:46.880 --> 00:47:55.519
So use the AI as a tool to take us even further, but not as a fear, because it is there and it's not going away.
00:47:55.519 --> 00:47:57.760
So, how do we use it to our advantage?
00:47:58.239 --> 00:48:00.559
Can I just add a couple of things to what Matt just said?
00:48:00.559 --> 00:48:05.920
I think the the one about the um talk about your assignment concept.
00:48:05.920 --> 00:48:09.280
Um, my hope, and this is my dream only, so I'm putting it out there, Matt.
00:48:09.280 --> 00:48:10.400
You can build it for me.
00:48:10.400 --> 00:48:17.519
Um, my hope is that the future assignment is a two-hour conversation or the future exam is a two-hour conversation with AI.
00:48:17.519 --> 00:48:27.440
And based on that conversation, the AI will determine what missing knowledge you have and create a genuine lifelong learning program for you to develop yourself.
00:48:27.440 --> 00:48:29.679
So it's a position of trust from the beginning.
00:48:29.679 --> 00:48:35.360
I'm not, you're not here to trick me into passing this exam, and I'm not here to believe you're a liar who's trying to cheat.
00:48:35.360 --> 00:48:38.960
This is genuinely an exercise in learning and development of you.
00:48:38.960 --> 00:48:44.480
And then we could build programs and bots that could kind of become your lifelong learning coach, essentially, right?
00:48:44.480 --> 00:48:45.440
That's where I'd love to go.
00:48:45.440 --> 00:48:54.000
But then to Matt's point earlier as well, um, I think the medium term, uh I know we'll get over this transition phase in another five to ten years.
00:48:54.000 --> 00:49:02.880
But I think the medium term thing that I'm really excited for humanity is I think AI will allow us to raise the bar of what we expect from each other and what we expect from humans.
00:49:02.880 --> 00:49:12.159
So I think the medium term will be these everything we're doing today that seems challenging will hopefully seem relatively easy, which then means we've got more time to think.
00:49:12.159 --> 00:49:14.400
And I I'm backing humanity on this.
00:49:14.400 --> 00:49:22.159
We'll think of the bigger problems that we can't solve today and the ones that we don't wish to dream of, the creativity that we haven't even thought of.
00:49:22.159 --> 00:49:32.320
I'm hoping that's where the medium term will go and the long term will go, where the universities and assessment and everything, the bar will be raised so high that we can't even imagine it today because we're restricted today.
00:49:32.639 --> 00:49:33.920
We've we've always evolved, right?
00:49:33.920 --> 00:49:35.519
We've always been able to evolve.
00:49:35.519 --> 00:49:38.320
The problem's always been like any new technology.
00:49:38.320 --> 00:49:44.800
We look at the doomsday scenarios, we hardly ever look at the the other side of it, and uh and a and a select view always does.
00:49:44.800 --> 00:49:54.639
And you wonder why there are billionaires and now trillionaires, because the ones that can think beyond the doomsday are the ones who actually create the new world.
00:49:54.639 --> 00:49:56.800
And I think that's the example of that.
00:49:56.800 --> 00:49:58.400
But Matt, just be careful.
00:49:58.400 --> 00:49:59.760
I know he said you can take it.
00:49:59.760 --> 00:50:01.760
He is an accountant, even though he's an academic.
00:50:01.840 --> 00:50:10.480
So if you get a bill in the mail, I want to watch the royalty after the podcast.
00:50:10.960 --> 00:50:12.480
You might get an invoice in your email.
00:50:12.480 --> 00:50:20.800
I'm gonna I just like to put my builder's lens on for a minute because I I view that through the lens of competence.
00:50:20.800 --> 00:50:25.599
So when you look at the apprenticeship model, I know that we've discussed that in the past, Matt.
00:50:25.599 --> 00:50:33.679
And as a as a as a carpenter, you do some theory, but then you're doing the practicality.
00:50:33.679 --> 00:50:40.239
And I think at the end of the day, in achieving a degree or doing an assignment, the assignment is just a test of competence.
00:50:40.239 --> 00:50:45.119
Uh Don mentioned before a few years ago I got my helicopter license, and it's exactly the same.
00:50:45.119 --> 00:50:52.239
There was a theory component, but then you've got to put the theory into practice in the cockpit and actually prove your competence.
00:50:52.239 --> 00:50:57.760
Well you can't you can't well you can't fly a helicopter with AI.
00:50:57.760 --> 00:51:03.599
So I think just I think that the education system just has to have a level of focus around competence.
00:51:03.599 --> 00:51:10.800
And at the end of the day, that the system has to be adjusted to prove confidence and then building in the performance of that confidence.
00:51:11.199 --> 00:51:12.400
Yeah, absolutely.
00:51:12.400 --> 00:51:14.800
I think that's you know, that's spot on.
00:51:14.800 --> 00:51:21.679
And the competence really is the key because we talked about, you know, well, what if you're just using AI to cheat?
00:51:21.679 --> 00:51:21.920
Right?
00:51:21.920 --> 00:51:24.480
The AI writes you're assigned, so you're not learning anything.
00:51:24.480 --> 00:51:25.760
Well, what about exams?
00:51:25.760 --> 00:51:26.960
I mean, how good are exams?
00:51:26.960 --> 00:51:31.920
If I gave any of us an exam that we sat 20 years ago, how well do you think any of us would perform?
00:51:31.920 --> 00:51:44.000
You literally cram information, just trying to memorize as much as you can to sit a two-hour exam and you forget everything virtually by the next day, or maybe you retain some of it for a week and then it's gone.
00:51:44.000 --> 00:51:44.719
What use is that?
00:51:44.719 --> 00:51:47.280
It's not cheating, still useless.
00:51:47.280 --> 00:51:51.840
So the real question is how are you building competence?
00:51:51.840 --> 00:52:00.400
And I love that idea of it's so interesting, just you know, the way things transform and go back to their roots and beginnings.
00:52:00.400 --> 00:52:20.639
But that idea of a two-hour presentation and communication and um Oxford University, hundreds of years ago, the way they assessed was through an oral examination, and you would be speaking to your professor and they would be testing you in some sort of um oral examination where you had to have a conversation and prove um and defend your thesis and whatever.
00:52:20.639 --> 00:52:22.400
And no one knows why exams are there.
00:52:22.400 --> 00:52:28.079
Everyone just assumes that exams are a fundamental part of university and they must be great because every university does them.
00:52:28.079 --> 00:52:30.239
And no one even asks why are exams there.
00:52:30.239 --> 00:52:34.400
Well, the reason exams are there are for no education benefit whatsoever.
00:52:34.400 --> 00:52:43.599
They're there because of industrialization, there's a significant increase in student numbers, so they couldn't do these oral one-on-one examinations anymore.
00:52:43.599 --> 00:52:47.599
They just had to put a thousand people in the same room, giving them a standardized test.
00:52:47.599 --> 00:52:51.760
It's a terrible way to teach, but that's really all you could do at mass scale.
00:52:51.760 --> 00:52:54.480
It's like a sausage factory, it's not about quality learning.
00:52:54.480 --> 00:53:11.599
So it's such an interesting um concept that you're talking about because it's kind of going back to the basic roots of how you design and think about learning and understanding and demonstrating competence rather than performing on a test that has no real life meaning.
00:53:12.000 --> 00:53:12.960
No, well said.
00:53:12.960 --> 00:53:14.559
Let's change gears a little bit.
00:53:14.559 --> 00:53:21.440
I know that Don said in the past that the philanthropy behind you, Matt, is much bigger than the business itself.
00:53:21.440 --> 00:53:23.920
Mate, tell us what you're doing over in Africa.
00:53:24.239 --> 00:53:30.800
Yeah, so we started our philanthropy at the same start, at the same time we started delivering education qualifications.
00:53:30.800 --> 00:53:35.039
So it was always a dual kind of process that we were going down.
00:53:35.039 --> 00:53:36.480
We started in Africa.
00:53:36.480 --> 00:53:42.559
We have so far impacted on 800,000 people across the African continent, 27 countries.
00:53:42.559 --> 00:53:47.119
Um, we've done a lot of work from the whole continent.
00:53:47.119 --> 00:53:55.119
I've traveled myself in um Northern Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, everywhere.
00:53:55.119 --> 00:53:59.760
Um, and we employ people to run projects.
00:53:59.760 --> 00:54:04.880
So we don't donate money to some big charity because there's too many problems with doing that.
00:54:04.880 --> 00:54:06.719
We run our own education programs.
00:54:06.719 --> 00:54:09.519
So that's always been a really, really important part of what we do.
00:54:09.519 --> 00:54:17.519
And there's all sorts of things that we've done across Africa, but that's broadened now to developing nations around the world.
00:54:17.519 --> 00:54:21.280
So we do scholarships for you really you just have to be in a developing nation.
00:54:21.280 --> 00:54:24.960
There's no even income test or assessment qualification that we do.
00:54:24.960 --> 00:54:27.920
If you come from a developing nation, we basically give you a scholarship.
00:54:27.920 --> 00:54:29.840
Um, and that's pretty exciting as well.
00:54:29.840 --> 00:54:34.320
And it goes back to that equalizer, you know, discussion we were having before.
00:54:34.320 --> 00:54:54.880
Doesn't matter if you're in Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Nigeria, Ghana, if you've got access to a recognized international degree that gets you a job, that gets you, you know, that little door opened that then allows you to show your worth and your value and your motivation and you get a promotion and then you get another.
00:54:54.880 --> 00:54:56.639
I mean, you're on the ladder.
00:54:56.639 --> 00:55:00.960
But the hardest part sometimes is just to get that first break.
00:55:00.960 --> 00:55:16.079
And so um, that's always been a really exciting part of what we do because people who just thought they would never have access to an international degree, um, and we do school-based programs as well, working with kids in schools, but yeah, that's always been a really good idea.
00:55:16.079 --> 00:55:18.719
Matt, tell us a bit about what is our philanthropy.
00:55:19.119 --> 00:55:21.679
Tell us a bit about what you do with the Disser Foundation.
00:55:21.679 --> 00:55:24.000
I mean, you build a publishing house in Zambia.
00:55:24.000 --> 00:55:27.199
Um why why do you want to keep everything in-house?
00:55:27.199 --> 00:55:29.519
Why do you why are you doing it in that way?
00:55:29.920 --> 00:55:32.559
Well, that's such an interesting question.
00:55:32.559 --> 00:55:35.199
So we had no plans to keep everything in-house.
00:55:35.199 --> 00:55:36.480
And you mentioned Zambia.
00:55:36.480 --> 00:55:40.800
So I was in Zambia 15 years ago, and I was meeting with government there.
00:55:40.800 --> 00:55:56.719
I met with governments in you know, education ministers and um ministry officials in various countries, trying to just understand the market because I didn't want to be that stereotypical, you know, white guy coming into Africa saying, we're gonna tell you how to improve your country and in so I had no idea.
00:55:56.719 --> 00:55:57.840
I'd never been to Africa before.
00:55:57.840 --> 00:55:58.639
What the hell do I know?
00:55:58.639 --> 00:56:00.079
I was completely naive.
00:56:00.079 --> 00:56:03.599
And so that's the way I approached everything.
00:56:03.599 --> 00:56:14.480
So I said, no, I want to go and visit schools, I want to talk to teachers, I want to talk to heads of schools, I want to speak to students, I want to see the facilities, I want to speak to the governments and really understand the market.
00:56:14.480 --> 00:56:30.239
Um, and so everyone I spoke to in Africa said, um, because you have, you know, IELTS, um, uh sorry not IELTS PISA testing where you standardize testing across countries and you look at how you know Switzerland compares to Singapore and whatever else.
00:56:30.239 --> 00:56:36.239
So many of these African countries were, you know, testing at the lowest levels in the world, and it's kind of embarrassing.
00:56:36.239 --> 00:56:45.280
So they're like, well, we want to improve our international results, and we really want to improve our year 11 and year 12 graduate results so we kind of look better internationally.
00:56:45.280 --> 00:56:46.719
I was like, okay, well, great.
00:56:46.719 --> 00:56:48.079
Well, there's a clear goal.
00:56:48.079 --> 00:56:55.679
And then I would go and visit schools, and I remember this was such a vivid thing for me because it kind of directed a lot of what we ended up doing.
00:56:55.679 --> 00:56:59.199
I went and spoke to a middle school head of school.
00:56:59.199 --> 00:57:03.840
And I said, Well, if we could give you anything, because we're not raising money, we were funding everything we did.
00:57:03.840 --> 00:57:07.920
We get tuition from university students, and then that funds our foundation.
00:57:07.920 --> 00:57:11.039
We don't do fundraisers and get donations and stuff.
00:57:11.039 --> 00:57:14.639
So um I said, if we could give you anything you wanted, what do you need?
00:57:14.639 --> 00:57:17.360
And I asked people this question sometimes, well, what do you guess that they would say?
00:57:17.360 --> 00:57:22.480
And people like, oh, pens, paper, computers, I don't know, textbooks.
00:57:22.480 --> 00:57:24.719
And so this is what I'm expecting.
00:57:24.719 --> 00:57:25.760
I'm like, what do you need?
00:57:25.760 --> 00:57:28.400
Tell us what you need, and we'll see what we can do.
00:57:28.400 --> 00:57:33.199
And this head of school says, we need better primary school kids.
00:57:33.199 --> 00:57:34.880
And I said, What?
00:57:34.880 --> 00:57:39.599
He said, the number three one thing we need is better primary school kids.
00:57:39.599 --> 00:57:46.639
He said, We get grade six kids coming to our school that can't basically write write their name on the board.
00:57:46.639 --> 00:57:50.000
And it's like, well, how are they getting into seventh grade?
00:57:50.000 --> 00:58:01.039
And they're like, Because the way the school system works is there's 500 fourth grade kids, and the next year, there's 500 third grade kids that need to move into fourth grade.
00:58:01.039 --> 00:58:02.800
So we can't leave the fourth grade kids there.
00:58:02.800 --> 00:58:11.840
They've got to move up to the fifth grade, and the fifth grade kids have to so they just keep pushing it along till it's like, you know, someone else's problem, you know, kick the can down the road, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
00:58:11.840 --> 00:58:13.440
And they said, it's like too late.
00:58:13.440 --> 00:58:19.440
What are we meant to do with like seventh grade kids that can't write first grade English?
00:58:19.440 --> 00:58:22.719
And then I went back to the government representatives we were dealing with.
00:58:22.719 --> 00:58:24.719
I said, we're not going to work on year 11 and 12.
00:58:24.719 --> 00:58:27.440
I said, if you want to work with us, we're going to start working in primary schools.
00:58:27.440 --> 00:58:35.280
If you're either serious about this and you want our help, or you're just looking for a band-aid short-term solution, um, then don't work with us if that's what you want.
00:58:35.280 --> 00:58:35.840
It's fine.
00:58:35.840 --> 00:58:38.239
We're not evangelists, we don't have to work here, we don't care.
00:58:38.239 --> 00:58:42.000
Um, you want our help, you think we can support, we'll do it.
00:58:42.000 --> 00:58:45.119
So we said, no, we're working in primary schools.
00:58:45.119 --> 00:58:53.920
And then, I don't know, this is too much information, but we um we're in Zambia and I'm dealing with some government officials, and I said, okay, so we'll buy textbooks for the schools.
00:58:53.920 --> 00:58:59.280
Typically, you would have one textbook for a class, it'd be like 40, 45 kids in a class, big classrooms.
00:58:59.280 --> 00:59:07.119
Sometimes you'd have a textbook for a year level, like multiple classes, and they'd have one textbook that I have to share across all of the classes.
00:59:07.119 --> 00:59:11.199
So I said, okay, we'll buy books for the schools, we'll buy libraries.
00:59:11.199 --> 00:59:13.199
I said, Where's your bookstores?
00:59:13.199 --> 00:59:15.440
And they're like, What do you mean we don't have any bookstores?
00:59:15.440 --> 00:59:18.079
I'm like, no, I'm like, we're in a city, like, where are the bookstores?
00:59:18.079 --> 00:59:19.039
We could go and buy books.
00:59:19.039 --> 00:59:20.880
And they're like, I'm having this weird conversation.
00:59:20.880 --> 00:59:22.159
They're telling me there's no bookstores.
00:59:22.159 --> 00:59:25.199
I'm like, you must have bookstores in a city.
00:59:25.199 --> 00:59:26.559
Like, where are your bookstores?
00:59:26.559 --> 00:59:28.960
Like, oh, we'll drive you down and show you our bookstores.
00:59:28.960 --> 00:59:39.519
So they drive me in a car, we're together, and we go to the local bookstore, which is a news agency, and it had a corner section with some books that weren't even like school books.
00:59:39.519 --> 00:59:40.960
I was like, what is going on here?
00:59:40.960 --> 00:59:42.079
It's bizarre.
00:59:42.079 --> 00:59:43.679
Um, so I thought, okay, easy.
00:59:43.679 --> 00:59:44.800
Like, I'm a genius, right?
00:59:44.800 --> 00:59:45.199
Easy.
00:59:45.199 --> 00:59:46.000
We just go buy books.
00:59:46.000 --> 00:59:47.360
Like, oh, well, that was a dumb idea.
00:59:47.360 --> 00:59:48.320
That's not gonna work.
00:59:48.320 --> 00:59:50.400
Um, I'm like, okay, I'm still a genius.
00:59:50.400 --> 00:59:51.920
I've got the next great idea.
00:59:51.920 --> 00:59:56.960
I know a lot of people in Canada, Scotland, England, Australia that would love to support this.
00:59:56.960 --> 00:59:59.119
I'll just get them to donate books that they're not using.
00:59:59.119 --> 01:00:00.480
Every year level it finishes.
01:00:00.480 --> 01:00:01.679
What are they gonna do with their books?
01:00:01.679 --> 01:00:02.719
Throw them in the trash.
01:00:02.719 --> 01:00:05.599
We'll get the books and we'll ship them to Africa.
01:00:05.599 --> 01:00:16.559
And I was thinking about this idea, and then I remembered, I won't swear, but I was remembering not with some profanity, that bloody oath is a different way of putting it.
01:00:16.559 --> 01:00:27.119
We got some um uh support from ESOP because they had some soaps that they couldn't use because they rebranded and whatever, and some other products, and schools have hygiene issues.
01:00:27.119 --> 01:00:29.599
Like, amazing, we're gonna ship all of this stuff to the schools.
01:00:29.599 --> 01:00:30.880
Thanks so much, that's great.
01:00:30.880 --> 01:00:35.280
Love that you're you know helping our kind of mission around school education.
01:00:35.280 --> 01:00:38.960
Uh, because food and hygiene is just as important as the teaching.
01:00:38.960 --> 01:00:46.079
Um, anyway, it took us like over a year to get these products into schools.
01:00:46.079 --> 01:00:49.599
The shipping was a nightmare, the customs was a nightmare.
01:00:49.599 --> 01:00:54.400
We spent months arguing with the government, they wanted to charge us import duties.
01:00:54.400 --> 01:00:55.760
We're like, are you serious?
01:00:55.760 --> 01:01:05.360
We're paying as a charity to ship this to your public schools, and you want to charge us import duties like we're selling commercial goods.
01:01:05.360 --> 01:01:10.000
So then I remembered, oh my God, it'll be an absolute nightmare trying to get books.
01:01:10.000 --> 01:01:13.440
So I was in Zambia and I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna go to the national radio station.
01:01:13.440 --> 01:01:16.480
I literally went to the radio station, I said, I want you to put ads on the radio.
01:01:16.480 --> 01:01:18.639
I said, we want to hire a publishing manager.
01:01:18.639 --> 01:01:33.360
We hired our first publishing manager in Zambia, and we created a program where we went into schools and taught the kids how to capture the oral storytelling traditions of the schools across the entire continent of Africa.
01:01:33.360 --> 01:01:35.840
And now these kids are published authors.
01:01:35.840 --> 01:01:39.679
We print the books, we publish them, we distribute them.
01:01:39.679 --> 01:01:51.199
It's all done in Africa, and it's so much better for so many reasons because the kids really want to learn about story books from Canada where they're talking about ice hockey, and you're in Rwanda.
01:01:51.199 --> 01:01:54.719
I don't think there's an ice hockey rink in the whole of the country of Rwanda.
01:01:54.719 --> 01:01:56.480
Someone might pull me up and say that's wrong.
01:01:56.480 --> 01:01:58.000
Actually, we do, but I don't know.
01:01:58.000 --> 01:01:59.840
I've never seen one in Rwanda.
01:01:59.840 --> 01:02:07.360
Um, it's like it's just so disconnected, or princesses, you know, fairyland stuff from, you know, English folklore.
01:02:07.360 --> 01:02:11.599
So now you've got the oral storytelling traditions of Africa.
01:02:11.599 --> 01:02:23.280
We've printed like 70 different publications from all across the continent, and children are learning culturally relevant materials, and they're their own published authors, which is so exciting.
01:02:23.280 --> 01:02:24.400
And that's just one program.
01:02:24.400 --> 01:02:32.000
There's lots of things we've done in maths and sciences and building peace centers and um, and then we do education scholarships for higher education.
01:02:32.000 --> 01:02:38.239
But anyway, that kind of gives you a bit of an idea of how trying to think about solving things in a in a bit of a different way.
01:02:38.239 --> 01:02:40.800
And we only work with the public system, by the way.
01:02:40.800 --> 01:02:49.199
You often hear about some, you know, rich person that's building a school in Africa, and I just find that kind of a really strange concept.
01:02:49.199 --> 01:02:51.119
So why would you go build a school in Africa?
01:02:51.119 --> 01:02:55.519
There's like 10,000 schools in Tanzania, none of them have enough learning resources.
01:02:55.519 --> 01:02:57.119
Why do they need another school?
01:02:57.119 --> 01:03:04.400
They don't need another school, they need better equipment for the whole 10,000 school system that's already there.
01:03:04.400 --> 01:03:08.639
So, you know, don't worry about the branding, focus more on how to improve the system.
01:03:08.960 --> 01:03:13.280
Matt, I've got to say, you've got to either be crazy or your brand's got to be wired differently.
01:03:13.280 --> 01:03:17.920
You you trying to build a university, one of the toughest things to do.
01:03:17.920 --> 01:03:23.119
And, you know, building a now uh well, you built a not-for-profit in Africa.
01:03:23.119 --> 01:03:26.639
Everything that you're saying sounds like you just love the challenge.
01:03:26.880 --> 01:03:27.599
Well, exactly.
01:03:27.599 --> 01:03:32.159
I think you just want to be like doing things that are exciting and and interesting.
01:03:32.159 --> 01:03:33.760
Otherwise, you know, you live once.
01:03:33.760 --> 01:03:34.400
What's the point?
01:03:34.400 --> 01:03:35.679
And uh fair enough.
01:03:35.679 --> 01:03:44.400
You know, I think uh not not not sure what the next challenge is, but you know, you always want to be doing something that's exciting and interesting.
01:03:44.800 --> 01:03:45.599
Politics, mate.
01:03:45.599 --> 01:03:46.559
Nah, let's not go there.
01:03:46.559 --> 01:03:52.800
But it's uh I was gonna say you did you talked about branding before, and um you called it philanthrocapitalism.
01:03:52.800 --> 01:04:01.199
Um, and you know, how how do you keep philanthropy from becoming the brand or philanthropy from becoming branding?
01:04:01.440 --> 01:04:03.039
Yeah, well, that's a good question.
01:04:03.039 --> 01:04:08.800
So philanthropy is not something that we're talking about in this podcast, but I didn't bring it up, and you know, you are.
01:04:08.800 --> 01:04:13.039
So it's not something that we generally promote, it's not something we often talk about.
01:04:13.039 --> 01:04:15.039
We don't really publicize it.
01:04:15.039 --> 01:04:18.000
We don't do a lot of press around it.
01:04:18.000 --> 01:04:24.159
Um so it's not so much a brand uh initiative for us, it's more of a purpose, mission-driven.
01:04:24.719 --> 01:04:26.320
I was asking more of a general question, man.
01:04:26.320 --> 01:04:29.599
I think there's a big for me, it's very close to home, right?
01:04:29.599 --> 01:04:41.280
Like we we look at some of these not-for-profits that that spend most of their um income or the donations into advertising and administration, right?
01:04:41.280 --> 01:04:50.320
Um I think the average is somewhere like ten cents on the dollar goes back into um to the actual work that they're set out to be doing.
01:04:50.320 --> 01:04:53.280
And this has been a huge bugbear for me.
01:04:53.280 --> 01:04:58.639
So they've become brands rather than than the Some of that philanthropy too, Don.
01:04:58.960 --> 01:05:01.679
I think I've seen a lot of ego around it.
01:05:01.679 --> 01:05:10.000
So various uh non-for-profits people are there's a bit of gloating going on in in relation to fundraising.
01:05:10.400 --> 01:05:10.559
Yeah.
01:05:10.559 --> 01:05:12.159
And that's what I wanted to ask Matt.
01:05:12.159 --> 01:05:20.320
Everything from what you've said is very different to everything that I'm seeing and and the issue that I have with philanthropy and and fundraising.
01:05:20.320 --> 01:05:29.199
You have you've practically created a circular economy where you don't have to depend on other people to raise money to do what you need to do.
01:05:29.199 --> 01:05:31.760
Um, and it seems like everything sort of yeah.
01:05:31.760 --> 01:05:36.960
So that's why I wanted to ask, how do you separate that branding exercise from the philanthropy itself?
01:05:37.360 --> 01:05:46.559
This is uh, you know, a relatively philosophical question, but um Mae Monedes was a 12th century scholar and talked about the various levels of charity.
01:05:46.559 --> 01:05:53.360
So this is stuff that people have been thinking about for like a thousand years in the case of May Monedes and thousands of years before that.
01:05:53.360 --> 01:05:55.599
Um and any charity is good.
01:05:55.599 --> 01:05:58.000
Anything that any of us do is good.
01:05:58.000 --> 01:05:59.760
If you're helping someone that needs food.
01:05:59.760 --> 01:06:00.960
Great.
01:06:00.960 --> 01:06:08.239
But what May Monitors talks about is that the lowest form of charity is when you give someone charity in order to get recognition.
01:06:08.239 --> 01:06:08.960
It's still good.
01:06:08.960 --> 01:06:10.000
It's not a bad thing.
01:06:10.000 --> 01:06:11.760
That's the lowest form of charity, right?
01:06:11.760 --> 01:06:20.079
So you donate money to a hospital or a school and you've got your name literally the size of a billboard on the MCG on the front of the building.
01:06:20.079 --> 01:06:20.400
Okay.
01:06:20.400 --> 01:06:24.639
So you're doing that for your own ego, or are you doing that because you really believe in the course?
01:06:24.639 --> 01:06:29.440
Either way, it's still helping the school, but you know, it's not necessarily the best form of charity.
01:06:29.440 --> 01:06:34.079
Um, higher than that is a form of charity where you're doing it where it's not even recognized.
01:06:34.079 --> 01:06:37.199
Like the person you're giving charity to doesn't even know that you're giving them charity.
01:06:37.199 --> 01:06:48.159
That's really important because often people can feel embarrassed or self-esteem or whatever, and you're just eliminating all of that because it's not about the ego, it's not about the recognition, just generally helping someone.
01:06:48.159 --> 01:06:54.079
And the highest form of charity, which is what we believe in, is to remove the need for charity.
01:06:54.079 --> 01:06:56.239
The best charity is to not need charity.
01:06:56.239 --> 01:06:57.199
And what does that mean?
01:06:57.199 --> 01:07:02.639
It means teach people a skill to support themselves, and you don't need charity at all.
01:07:02.639 --> 01:07:10.239
So that's a big question around what the purpose of charity should be, and every organization is different.
01:07:10.239 --> 01:07:12.639
But some organizations don't have a choice.
01:07:12.639 --> 01:07:17.280
Very big brands that you're talking about, Don, they don't have a separate source of income.
01:07:17.280 --> 01:07:17.920
They're not a business.
01:07:17.920 --> 01:07:22.559
Like the Pratt Foundation is a great example of philanthropic capitalists, right?
01:07:22.559 --> 01:07:31.679
You've got Visi, which is a huge, enormous business in packaging worth billions of dollars, and they set up their own foundation and they donate to causes that they feel is relevant.
01:07:31.679 --> 01:07:38.880
But if you're, uh won't name any names, but if you're a very public profile charity, all of your money comes from the public.
01:07:38.880 --> 01:07:41.360
Well, how do you get money from the public if no one knows you?
01:07:41.360 --> 01:07:49.360
So you're running TV ads and you're running radio ads and you're out at shopping centers with paying people to hand out pamphlets and raise money.
01:07:49.360 --> 01:07:52.880
So they still could be doing really worthwhile things.
01:07:52.880 --> 01:08:16.640
But the unfortunate part that you're kind of referring to is that, yeah, well, half the money I'm donating, I'm not donating $100 because I'm thinking that we need vaccines in this area where people don't have medical resources, and that $100, $50 just goes to their marketing budget, and then $20 is going to their administration, and out of the $100, $30 is going to the actual cause that I'm donating to.
01:08:16.640 --> 01:08:21.279
And then people get upset about that because they think, why would I donate the money?
01:08:21.279 --> 01:08:24.800
But then people who work in charities have to get paid as well, right?
01:08:24.800 --> 01:08:27.840
So it's like, well, you can't expect everyone to work for free.
01:08:27.840 --> 01:08:30.079
Like, how are they paying their mortgage?
01:08:30.079 --> 01:08:39.039
So there are some complex questions around the best modeling of charity, and there's all sorts of variations and extremes within that.
01:08:39.279 --> 01:08:41.279
What's your view on that, Fahim?
01:08:42.000 --> 01:08:50.640
Uh I used to sit on a charity board, and to Matt's point earlier, I used to say to every board meeting, I used to say, hey, you know, if we're successful, we won't exist.
01:08:50.640 --> 01:08:52.319
That used to be the line, okay?
01:08:52.319 --> 01:08:53.840
We should exist to not exist.
01:08:53.840 --> 01:08:55.520
That should be our purpose, right?
01:08:55.520 --> 01:09:02.880
Um and unfortunately, obviously, the world, there are lots of people in very uh difficult situations and you need the help.
01:09:02.880 --> 01:09:05.279
Um, I don't know if the numbers are as high as you think.
01:09:05.279 --> 01:09:08.720
I think it's my experience, uh, we can look them up on the ACNC.
01:09:08.720 --> 01:09:12.479
I think uh I think overheads are like around 25% at the top end.
01:09:12.479 --> 01:09:14.800
Uh so 75% does still go there.
01:09:14.800 --> 01:09:24.479
Where it's hard, obviously, uh, to get the impact, but to Matt's point again, I think we need these big charities to motivate others to donate.
01:09:24.479 --> 01:09:26.800
I think we're all trying to make the world a kind of better place.
01:09:26.800 --> 01:09:28.319
I think ultimately that's what it is.
01:09:28.319 --> 01:09:33.199
Now, obviously, there's a few people who come into this world for ego or just to make money.
01:09:33.199 --> 01:09:34.960
There's some fraudsters as well.
01:09:34.960 --> 01:09:37.119
If we put them aside, I think they're the minority.
01:09:37.119 --> 01:09:50.239
The majority of us who are doing anything philanthropic, whether they be a big brand, a big celebrity or not, or just the small person who helps their neighbor, everyone's trying to make the world a better place and make sure that the person next door gets an equal go, right?
01:09:50.239 --> 01:09:54.239
Yeah, um, so and that's one of the best things I love about South Africa.
01:09:54.239 --> 01:10:12.239
And I think we can get into another philosophical debate, but tax, if you take a that perspective of redistribution of wealth, the majority of tax dollars or the one of the biggest benefits of tax is that there's no one person who goes hungry, we've got the safety net, the social safety net and stuff.
01:10:12.239 --> 01:10:14.079
Like I come from Bangladesh and South Africa.
01:10:14.079 --> 01:10:17.279
I've seen countries where there is no safety net, right?
01:10:17.279 --> 01:10:20.720
And so I'll it's I love it when people argue with tax with me.
01:10:20.720 --> 01:10:22.399
I'm like, Look, I get it.
01:10:22.399 --> 01:10:26.880
There's probably some inefficiencies in how the government's spending the tax dollars I'm giving me.
01:10:26.880 --> 01:10:32.159
But en masse, that's probably the largest way to distribute really good services, right?
01:10:32.159 --> 01:10:34.239
Um, I mean, you just did the sleep out, right?
01:10:34.239 --> 01:10:44.319
And every time I meet one of my friends who does the sleep out, I tell them afterwards, you know, if you just advocated for different policies, we'd probably have a bigger impact than your sleep on no offense.
01:10:44.319 --> 01:10:46.000
But like we're gonna have a bigger impact.
01:10:46.000 --> 01:10:47.279
Don't worry about it.
01:10:47.279 --> 01:10:52.960
I had this conversation with uh Magnus, I think, yesterday before he went for his sleep out.
01:10:53.199 --> 01:10:54.399
So it is true.
01:10:54.479 --> 01:10:56.319
But it's great to raise awareness though.
01:10:56.319 --> 01:10:58.800
And to Matt's point, anything's good, yeah.
01:10:58.800 --> 01:11:00.239
We could always just do better.
01:11:00.720 --> 01:11:02.720
It's the doing part because it it it did.
01:11:02.720 --> 01:11:08.399
I did sleep, I did sleep rough last night and and I'm struggling a little bit today as a consequence.
01:11:08.399 --> 01:11:14.560
There's a lot of a few aches that have arisen as a consequence of sleeping on a piece of cardboard.
01:11:14.560 --> 01:11:21.039
But it does really reiterate to people when you do see tents set up in parks.
01:11:21.039 --> 01:11:23.199
That's that's that's how they're living.
01:11:23.199 --> 01:11:25.359
And and that's sad for a first world country.
01:11:25.439 --> 01:11:28.800
Aaron Powell Awareness is another big p part of all of this, right?
01:11:28.800 --> 01:11:41.840
Like every time, every every charity or everything that you do, there's lots of people who just want that happy to live in uh an oblivious reality of the world, and these things do bring that to the forefront, then it does help.
01:11:42.159 --> 01:11:44.640
It's probably the first time I've been in Australia 23 years.
01:11:44.640 --> 01:11:47.439
It's only recently I've started seeing these tents and stuff, right?
01:11:47.439 --> 01:11:53.119
Um the Bangladesh equivalent, where it's so much that nobody does anything about it, you have to actually block it out.
01:11:53.119 --> 01:12:04.000
So you go to a restaurant, you have dinner, you get in your car to be driven home, and as you're driving home, 10 kids will come up to your window asking for if you've got any leftovers that they can take.
01:12:04.000 --> 01:12:12.319
So that doggy bag that you take home doesn't make it home because you've got 10 kids at your window that you can give the doggy bag to potentially if you wanted to.
01:12:12.319 --> 01:12:25.199
But what's happened, what I've seen in Bangladesh, and I can't judge it from here, but because it's so, so big an issue in developing countries, is people who are in positions of um privilege have just had to shut them out.
01:12:25.199 --> 01:12:27.920
So they pretend like they don't even see the kids at the window.
01:12:27.920 --> 01:12:31.920
Okay, and that's kind of how they deal with it, and it's a coping mechanism.
01:12:31.920 --> 01:12:39.279
So I'm I'll never knock anyone who's doing anything charitable ever, even if it moves the dial one tiny little bit.
01:12:39.279 --> 01:12:48.399
I just think to how Matt is trying to improve the education sector, I think there's a few things we could do in the charity sector as well to improve the impact.
01:12:48.399 --> 01:12:51.359
So the sleep art is a great example, not to jump on a higher.
01:12:51.359 --> 01:13:05.439
If we could now all go, okay, everyone who slept out, the biggest impact we can have is go talk to the responsible minister in government and say, you know what, we're putting our name to you changing the policy to allocate some tax government funding to this issue more.
01:13:05.920 --> 01:13:13.680
We actually had the minister's representative um there last night, and it's great because the government is getting very heavily involved in that in that court.
01:13:13.680 --> 01:13:16.239
So we are running out of time, Don.
01:13:16.239 --> 01:13:18.640
I'm giving you an opportunity, Don.
01:13:18.640 --> 01:13:23.680
What what some closing questions or I know you by now.
01:13:24.319 --> 01:13:25.359
This is a closing statement.
01:13:25.359 --> 01:13:27.199
I want to say a statement, not a question.
01:13:27.199 --> 01:13:28.800
It's not a question.
01:13:28.800 --> 01:13:32.399
It's something that you said about it's something that you said about tax, right?
01:13:32.399 --> 01:13:35.039
Coming from I think it's coming from a third world country.
01:13:35.039 --> 01:13:56.399
I think there you actually get an appreciation for a well-executed tax model or a system because it's you know, you you've seen what doesn't work, and you come here, and a lot of people in Australia talk about, you know, we're one of the highest taxed um countries on the planet, and I don't care because most of the benefits that we get is part of that.
01:13:56.399 --> 01:13:58.000
The lifestyle pays for it, yeah.
01:13:58.000 --> 01:14:02.399
Yeah, I I just wanted to agree with you on that, and I don't have any any other questions.
01:14:02.880 --> 01:14:08.000
So any closing statements from you, Fain, before we get into the quick fire questions, Matt, get ready, mate.
01:14:08.239 --> 01:14:18.159
Uh the closing statement, I think going back to the theme of education and why we do it, and I think um just going back to the probably the higher overarching thing, I think, why we were here is kindness and empathy.
01:14:18.159 --> 01:14:24.000
I think we're all sitting around this table realizing that we've had pretty good lives and we're living really well.
01:14:24.000 --> 01:14:28.560
It's just how we make sure everyone else also has one too, and giving people the chance to do so.
01:14:28.560 --> 01:14:33.199
So as long as we stay on that purpose, I think that we're hope for humanity, really.
01:14:33.520 --> 01:14:34.239
Well said.
01:14:34.239 --> 01:14:37.439
All right, Matt, we'll jump into these quick fire questions, mate.
01:14:37.439 --> 01:14:41.840
You know what uh they're all about short little one-sentence max answers.
01:14:41.840 --> 01:14:42.640
Are you ready?
01:14:42.960 --> 01:14:43.439
I'm ready.
01:14:43.439 --> 01:14:43.680
Ready.
01:14:44.560 --> 01:14:45.199
Let's do it.
01:14:45.199 --> 01:14:48.159
One thing AI will never replace.
01:14:48.159 --> 01:14:50.479
Uh human feelings.
01:14:50.479 --> 01:14:54.079
The most overrated word in education.
01:14:54.399 --> 01:14:56.720
Um Innovation?
01:14:57.680 --> 01:15:01.359
The most underrated skill of the next decade.
01:15:01.680 --> 01:15:04.640
Human connectivity and empathy.
01:15:05.680 --> 01:15:07.600
Australia or America?
01:15:07.600 --> 01:15:11.039
Where does the next great university get built?
01:15:11.439 --> 01:15:19.600
Um I would have to say in America because of the variation and and uh experimentation that you have here.
01:15:20.000 --> 01:15:25.279
This next question, I got no idea, but I'll ask it anyway because Don's gone to a lot of trouble to write these.
01:15:25.279 --> 01:15:27.119
A degree or a plane ticket?
01:15:27.439 --> 01:15:29.039
A degree or a plane ticket.
01:15:29.039 --> 01:15:30.079
Yeah, exactly.
01:15:30.079 --> 01:15:39.039
Um I would I would invest in yourself and I would get uh a degree and be able to afford to get many, mm many plane tickets.
01:15:39.359 --> 01:15:39.600
Nice.
01:15:40.000 --> 01:15:40.800
Well said.
01:15:40.800 --> 01:15:44.079
The hardest lesson AA has taught you.
01:15:44.399 --> 01:15:46.079
The hardest lesson, AA?
01:15:46.079 --> 01:15:47.199
LA.
01:15:47.199 --> 01:15:48.560
Los Angeles.
01:15:48.560 --> 01:15:51.520
Oh, LA, I think you're Alcoholics Anonymous.
01:15:51.520 --> 01:15:55.039
I mean, I'll be starting a new book.
01:15:55.039 --> 01:15:59.199
Do I do I need to be in AA?
01:15:59.199 --> 01:15:59.600
I don't know.
01:15:59.600 --> 01:16:00.159
Okay.
01:16:00.159 --> 01:16:03.279
Um, the hardest lesson that LA has taught.
01:16:03.279 --> 01:16:04.079
Is that the question?
01:16:04.079 --> 01:16:04.720
Yes.
01:16:04.720 --> 01:16:09.439
LA is a very difficult place, um, has a lot of challenges.
01:16:09.439 --> 01:16:17.439
So the hardest lesson is, and you were touching on this just at your last comment on about you know the great infrastructure and support services.
01:16:17.439 --> 01:16:20.239
And LA is a country of extremes.
01:16:20.239 --> 01:16:30.000
You're literally on the street with nothing and you've got no food and no support, or you're living, you know, like a billionaire and uh just so much money you don't know what to do with it.
01:16:30.000 --> 01:16:33.119
And those extremities are pretty hard.
01:16:33.119 --> 01:16:37.920
And um I could go on, but you said to keep it to a sentence, I'll leave it at that.
01:16:38.319 --> 01:16:43.119
A leader, living or dead, you'd put in your faculty tomorrow.
01:16:43.520 --> 01:16:45.039
Benjamin Franklin.
01:16:45.920 --> 01:16:46.560
Wow.
01:16:46.560 --> 01:16:50.399
One thing every five-year-old should be learning right now.
01:16:50.720 --> 01:16:53.920
How to communicate with keeping eye contact.
01:16:54.479 --> 01:16:58.399
Single decision that's built your career more than any other.
01:16:58.720 --> 01:17:03.039
Believe in yourself and you're your own best security.
01:17:03.039 --> 01:17:08.079
Don't think a big brand, a big company, something else is going to give you security.
01:17:08.079 --> 01:17:09.920
You're your own security.
01:17:10.640 --> 01:17:11.439
Well said.
01:17:11.439 --> 01:17:12.880
Last question, mate.
01:17:12.880 --> 01:17:14.000
Finish this sentence.
01:17:14.159 --> 01:17:19.920
A degree should be something that you are genuinely learning from.
01:17:20.239 --> 01:17:21.600
Oh, fantastic, mate.
01:17:21.600 --> 01:17:24.640
Thank you very much again for your time and your insights, Matt.
01:17:24.640 --> 01:17:31.119
I've been managed to not get too uh distracted by that pink thing floating around behind you, mate.
01:17:31.119 --> 01:17:34.479
It's been a it's been an absolute privilege and a pleasure, mate.
01:17:34.479 --> 01:17:34.800
Thank you.
01:17:35.039 --> 01:17:35.600
It has, Matt.
01:17:35.600 --> 01:17:41.680
And Matt, can I um ask if people want to find you, um, what's the best way for them to reach you?
01:17:41.920 --> 01:17:42.800
So, a couple of ways.
01:17:42.800 --> 01:17:43.439
Good question.
01:17:43.439 --> 01:17:47.760
So, LinkedIn, um, I'm on LinkedIn, that's always a good way to try to connect.
01:17:47.760 --> 01:17:55.840
Um, and from our websites, um Kennedy U, just the letter U, Kennedy U.education, is a good way to find us.
01:17:55.840 --> 01:18:04.720
And if anyone's kind of interested in finding out more about who we are and and what we do, um, or deserve.education, d-u-c-e-re-e.education.
01:18:04.720 --> 01:18:08.479
Uh, so there's various ways um to touch with us.
01:18:08.880 --> 01:18:10.800
We'll put all those um in the show notes.
01:18:10.800 --> 01:18:11.600
Nice.
01:18:11.600 --> 01:18:13.039
Thanks, Matt.
01:18:13.039 --> 01:18:14.000
Cheers, mate.
01:18:14.000 --> 01:18:14.479
Thank you.
01:18:14.720 --> 01:18:15.359
Thank you so much.
01:18:15.359 --> 01:18:16.960
Thanks, guys.
01:18:16.960 --> 01:18:17.680
See you later.
01:18:18.640 --> 01:18:22.159
Hope you enjoyed this exciting episode of the Mastering Podcast.
01:18:22.159 --> 01:18:28.399
If you got value from today's conversation, hit that subscribe button now and share this episode with a friend.
01:18:28.399 --> 01:18:30.000
Until next time.