Russ Roberts: evaluation

Transcript context

…Russ, thank you very much for having me. I’m so curious about your new ventures. Let me start with a general question. In the mature economies, why aren’t there more new universities? Shalem is in its ninth year, and how is starting a new university in Israel different from in the United States? We have a very strange business model. We lose money on every student, and we make it up by volume. We give all of our students a stipend that covers their tuition and a good chunk of their living expenses, and as a result — in America, if that were the case — we take no money from the government; it’s all private donations. And we’re in competition, we like to think, for the best students here in Israel. They often are on scholarships, so we have to match that. That’s the business model. In America, if you don’t take money from the government, you usually get less regulation, in turn. That is not the case here. The Council for Higher Education is extremely vigilant in making sure that we keep all of our promises. They’re very, very detail oriented. Number of toilets, I think, is regulated here per student. You can imagine starting a new major — we’ve got to get their approval, we have to provide the syllabi of all the classes that would be taught in the major, we have to show the faculty that would be teaching in the major, and we have to get a variety of committees to sign off on it. To create a whole college is a major enterprise that people who came before me did all that lifting, heavy and light. In America, the challenge, of course, is both accreditation and reputation. You’re in competition with existing — like any new entry, you have to compete with the existing competitors. In the case of a college, brand name’s extremely important in America, obviously. People have emotional ties to colleges. I think there are very, very few new colleges that are at the highest level. As you know, of course, University of Austin is aspiring to be one of those startups in America, but it’s not an easy task. It’s hard to do. Being a university president, it also has a managerial side. How are you feeling managerial culture as being different in Israel compared to the United States?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.