Safeguarding the Future of an HBCU

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1:13And when losses do happen, that work is paired with insurance coverage shaped by years of underwriting, risk engineering, and claims experience. Learn more at thehartford.com slash risk mitigation. Policies provided by Hartford Fire Insurance Company and its property and casualty affiliates, Hartford, Connecticut. Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Well, we love checking in with college and university presidents here on Bloomberg Business Week, especially these days because there's a lot of conversation about the cost of college, whether it's worth it in the age of AI, the ballooning student debt load, all of those things.

2:00It's crazy. I mean, just get us like the little matrix port. We can just like upload everything and then just, you know, move on. That would be absolutely terrible. Well, not that far away from that. I know, I know. Listen, college is important, not just because of the things you learn, but the things you learn about yourself and other people and social skills and community and all of the above. And I will hop off my soapbox now so you can introduce our guest. We've got with us Dr. Martin LaMelle Jr., the president of Grambling State University. It's a public HBCU based in Louisiana. Back in 2024, he became the youngest president of the university.

2:28He joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. Welcome, welcome. It's a pleasure to be here with you. You've got an interesting background because you have all this private sector experience. You were in charge of finances and operations in universities before this. Your path to becoming university president, it's not typical. Oftentimes we talk about these folks who are professors at the university and then they are appointed president. How does that change the way you look at the operations and the finances of a school? I think about the university as an enterprise. And so, yes, we exist for a mission and a purpose at Grambling State University.

3:06We're grounded in being the place where everybody is somebody. But at this strategic inflection, we also have to think about affordability, how we look at the cost of instruction and rate both well-performing programs and programs that need to exist for purposes outside of just the margin. And so it brings a definite perspective to the business concept of higher ed. Have you ever met another university president who wears Ray-Ban meta glasses with cameras on them? A few. Okay. But being a millennial leader. I can just imagine the president of my university not wearing glasses with camera lenses on them.

3:46I bring a unique perspective. Okay. Absolutely. I do want to ask you about HBCUs because a lot of them are struggling right now to be solvent. How do you balance? HBCUs are so important to the communities that they're in and to the community as a whole, but they also have to be profitable. They have to be functional because otherwise they won't continue to exist. How do you balance those two things? I'm happy to lead an institution that has one of the healthiest balance sheets in the country. When we think about Granlin State University going forward and our mission as an HBCU, we want to deliver on our value proposition, which starts with a first-class education, and it's grounded in a perspective that allows students to achieve ultimate social and economic mobility.

4:32We serve students who are often Pell eligible, but when they leave Granlin State University, They're going into a workforce. They're going into graduate school. And they're seeing generational wealth creation. And that's a part of the Grambling Promise. Yeah, go ahead. I just say, how are you teaching students those soft skills? Because time and time again with young people, especially young people who, to no fault of their own, grew up during the pandemic where they didn't get the opportunity to work in an office, to intern as much as some of us did. You know, things like how to talk to your boss, how to show up on time, what is appropriate in the office to wear, to say all of those things.

5:05Is that something you're trying to address as well? We think of our students as the art of the multi-hyphenate. So a student studying chemistry will also have an opportunity to take public speaking, be a part of our university choir, our world-famed Tiger Marchant Band, and maybe even play soccer. And so you bring all of those skills to bear, and it's an understanding that you will have a multi-dimensional life. And we want you to bring that fullness to Gremlin, and we want to help prepare you for the next chapter. Tim, did you do band? Did not do band in college. No music? No. I mean, I tried to.

5:38In high school, did you band? No. I did band in junior high. Okay. Bass clarinet. Of course. That counts. Yeah, that counts. I felt like it was in your background somewhere. That's why I was fishing. No, no. I did piano. Yeah, and I played piano. Very nice. And then tried to play guitar in college, but that didn't really work out. I feel like everyone tries to play guitar in college. I think, yeah. That's, yeah. Especially guys our age. Yeah. But on the preparing students for the future right now. Absolutely. Back to the AI side of this. And I was kind of joking about your glasses, but not really.

6:05Sure. It does show that you're in touch with the technology of today. And that is the big question about college and the value of college right now. In a world where you can literally ask an LLM to write a history paper for you, what is the value proposition for college? We think about it as human with machine. And so do you understand the large language model? can you create a prompt that's going to allow you to have the right starting point? But ultimately, it's going to be up to you to defend the thesis, to speak in front of the crowd, to share your research. And so we're preparing our students to embrace technology, but leverage it as an accelerator, not an absolute.

6:50So how is it used in the classroom right now? You know, because I went to undergrad. We didn't all have laptops in the class, and we're taking notes on them. Like, laptops, I think, were probably too expensive then. Maybe. Or maybe they weren't even allowed in classrooms then. I don't remember. But then I went to business school more than 10 years later, and everybody had a laptop there. It was a completely different experience. How do you use tech in the classroom? So we're embedding AI credentials. Students in our Moorhead College of Business actually had to have an AI credential to ultimately graduate.

7:21And so we are embracing it so that students are prepared to learn the technology, but also be leaders with the technology. Actually, Tim, you know what? Now that I think about it, I had a PDA that clipped into a little fold-out keyboard. That's what I had. And you're right, grad school, I had a laptop. Yeah, we are that old. Wow, thank you for that. Thank you for that. I just want to ask you broadly, do you think higher education, as it's structured right now, is working for most students? Do you think the ROI, a phrase we use here a lot at Bloomberg, is worth what these kids are paying for what they're getting?

7:55Absolutely. When we think about the investment in a college education, particularly for Grambling, which is the number one institution in the state of Louisiana for social and economic mobility, we know that our students attend Grambling, get an affordable education, and then get an immediate return on that investment. And so we're thankful for everyone continuing to choose us. We know that it's a choice, and there are many choices today. We're embracing spaces like cybersecurity, but we also continue our pathway in education. And so we believe that we can do both and understand the future, but also stay very rooted in what has made higher education great.

8:31There are so many concerns about what AI is doing to this economy. And we were talking about a story earlier, just in the last 30 seconds that we have, about how a lot of the jobs that interns were doing in the past, AI are doing. So it's harder and harder to get internships and entry-level jobs. Just 30 seconds recruiting and what companies are doing on campus, how that works. It's shifting. And so we're seeing students as early as their first year starting pre-professional or internship programs because we know that students enter into the job market. They will almost need to be managerial ready.

9:05So when they're 18, 19, they're doing internships. Absolutely. We're starting them very early. We're starting them with Gallup StrengthsFinders to understand their core and get that experience day one so that they can manage operations or manage an agent when they start their first job. Dr. Martin Lamel Jr., thank you so much for joining us. Thank you both, Tim and Christina. Reminding us how old we are too. We can't be managed by an AI agent or a young person. We are ungovernable here, but it's nice to have you join us. I think everybody knows that about you by now. Oh, shush. Thank you both.

9:36Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Lamel is president of Grambling State University. He joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio.

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