Rebranding the Democratic Party + The College Affordability Crisis

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1:40Scott Galloway:Welcome to Office Hours with Prof G. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehours at profgmedia.com. Again, that's officehours at profgmedia.com. Or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in our next episode. Question one. Our first question comes from Reddit user Gooseneck07, who asks, do you think the Democrats should co-opt the America first or Americans first as their brand in 26 and 28?

2:15Clearly, the current iteration of conservatism in America has not been America first, So this is a messaging opportunity for Democrats. It could be an opportunity for higher wages, less foreign intervention, no corruption, no nepotism and better outcomes such as housing and healthcare. Would love your thoughts. Thank you. Hmm, so that's kind of cute. Americans first, America versus Americans first. I think that's, I like it because it's kind of a play on what they said.

2:46Scott Galloway:America first is sort of come across as a little bit, I think it's backfired because America first has sort of meant, let's put ridiculous weird tariffs on our allies. Canada, where 70 % of their exports are coming into the U.S. The way I describe how Canada feels about us is from the movie Animal House when they let, or the guy lets his fraternity brothers borrow his parents' car and they bash it up and they bring it home. And I think it's odder. He says, you fucked up, you trusted us. And I think that's how a lot of our allies feel, becoming so interdependent upon the U.S. So I think it's a good play on words and it depositions them.

3:26Scott Galloway:Effectively, what this is, is in branding, we call it laddering. And that is you drop the attributes of your competitor and then you draw comparisons. So if you ladder Democrats versus Republicans, you'd go, all right, one is big government, one is small government, one is pro-family, one is like pro-choice, one is quote unquote pro-life. And then you just go through each. And you ask yourself, which of these is truly differentiated? You know, are we really, are the Republicans really small government? No, they've been as big government about spending as the Democrats. You probably wouldn't want to hang your hat on that.

4:03One's pro-war, one's anti-war. Well, actually, Democrats have engaged in a lot of military interventions or adventures as well. You try and find something where you're truly different. And then is it sustainable? Does anybody care? Can you own it? Can you own that? If you're fortunate enough to find an attribute that is differentiated, also relevant, can you own it? I would probably advertise fiscal responsibility, which should bring down interest rates, should bring down costs. That does not fit on a bumper sticker. I like the word renewal. What do I mean by that? That's the word I love. We need to renew our alliances between our incredible allies, specifically in Europe and Canada, and renew trust around the world.

4:46We need to renew the bond and the cooperation between moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans. We need to figure out a way to work together. This legislative Congress or this Congress has been the most inactive legislative. Nothing gets done. They all hate each other. We elect crazies from the left, crazies from the right, and then put them in a closet and say, here, have a knife fight. It's just not working. And also renew the relationship between men and women. I think that's the greatest alliance in history. and it needs to be renewed. We need to do away with identity politics and start developing a greater fidelity for the flag.

5:23I think mandatory national service, such that young people could stop identifying as a special interest group or a party, but identify as Americans again. So I like the word renewal. I think, if you will, the Americans first is sort of a cute turn of phrase that sort of depositions them. But personally, I don't like referencing the competition. I don't like just always, one of the things I don't like about Democrats is we need to evolve from indignance to ideas. Hating Trump and not being Trump is not a winning political position. It needs to be more than that. And that is 90 percent. I mean, let me describe the Democratic platform right now.

6:03Jesus Christ, can you believe what he just did? That's essentially the Democratic platform. That's not, you know, the people who are angry are already voting Democrat. We're going to have to paint a vision for why the people in the middle want to vote Democratic this time. Usually that's about economics. Those are the swing voters. They care about who's going to put more money in their pockets. But they're willing to engage in a policy around responsible fiscal spending, etc. So I think it's more, I love the word renewal. I think what you're suggesting is sort of an interesting talking point that, you know, we need, you know, Donald Trump promised to put America first.

6:41But what we really need to talk about is putting Americans first. I like that, but I don't think it's the rallying call. I think, unfortunately, you have to be able to put this on a bumper sticker. And I think the term or something around the notion of renewal is a little bit more powerful, a little bit more optimistic, and doesn't reference the competition. Generally in brand strategy, if you think of yourself as the market leader, which both parties think of themselves as, you never or you try not to reference the competition too much. Anyways, I think it's a really interesting discussion. I'm fascinated by it, about how our brand positioning needs to evolve, how it needs to be more pro-growth.

7:21I mean, another good word might be growth. And that is start focusing on how do we unleash the economy and make it work for everybody by investing in the middle class, which has traditionally been the engine of growth, if you will. So there's a bunch of different ways you could go, but I think it's going to be a fascinating conversation. So where do I end up? Americans first is a great talking point, but I don't think it's the rallying cry of the bumper sticker here. I appreciate the question. Question number two. Hello, Jeff here from the Pacific Northwest. I have a question regarding university endowments.

7:56I've heard you say a few times that universities with an endowment over$1 billion should increase their freshman class sizes and offer non-traditional education or lose their nonprofit status. I'd like to understand more about how this would work. As contacts, I volunteer on a board at the university I attended. Every time I raise the idea of using endowment funds, I get a response that essentially says, legally, we can't touch it, our hands are tied. Is this accurate? I'd appreciate some help on how to engage on this topic with a more important perspective. By the way, I'm a big fan. I bought your latest book for both my sons and other young men in my life.

8:35Thank you for that. I plug to the other listeners. It is graduation season and notes on being a man is a great gift for the young men in your life. Thanks again.

8:44Scott Galloway:Well, thank you for the plug and thanks for the kind words. So just some data. U.S. universities collectively hold nearly a trillion dollars in endowed assets, a total of$944 billion across 657 institutions. Harvard's$53 billion endowment works out to more than$7 million for undergraduate student and has grown roughly$2 billion a year since 2018, while class sizes stayed flat and tuition kept rising. What you mentioned, donor restricted funds do exist. If a donor's gift stipulates a specific use, the university must honor it. For example, Harvard has a divinity professorship endowed in 1721 that still dictates how those funds are spent.

9:25Scott Galloway:But restricted doesn't describe the whole endowment. At Stanford, over three quarters is donor restricted, meaning 25 % is not. In practice, universities spend about 5 % of endowment assets per year. The governing framework in most states is the UPMIFA, the University Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act. That rolls right off the tongue. It encourages restrained spending, but does not mandate a specific payout rate. The 5 % figure is more of an informal industry norm as opposed to a legal ceiling. By contrast, private foundations are legally required to distribute at least 5 % annually.

10:02Scott Galloway:Universities face no equivalent federal for. On taxes, so in sum, private foundations have to spend their money at some point, but not universities. On taxes, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act imposed a 1.4 % excise tax on net investment income from private colleges with endowments exceeding a half a million dollars per student, a modest nudge affecting about 56 schools. So they said if you're going to hoard wealth, you're going to have to pay some taxes on the gains. Now, again, that tax is nothing like the tax that corporations or citizens pay on profits. But anyways, the one big beautiful bill signed July 2025 raised that to 8 % for institutions with endowments over$2 million per student, hitting Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT.

10:47Now, that doesn't really encourage spending, if you will. I mean, this, like so many other things, is basically, Trump has decided that these universities are centers of progressive ideology, and he sees them as his enemy. So his policies are more or less meant to go after them and move them away from this progressive positioning. It's not an attempt to broaden the number of freshman seats, if you will.

11:18Scott Galloway:so Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and MIT were hit here and they haven't responded with larger freshman classes or greater spending Harvard's endowment generated two and a half billion dollars in investment income in fiscal year 2024 but 8 % of that is not I don't know it's not going to alter behavior look in some it comes down to this I think what's infected universities endowments is infecting America more broadly and that is the wealthiest among us and the wealthiest institutions are engaging in hoarding. And that is they're more focused on building a big endowment than they are and expanding their freshman class size.

11:57This is a hoarding.

12:00Scott Galloway:And that is they should be spending this money. Can you dictate where they spend it? I'd like to think so. I like the idea that you have to expand your freshman class size faster than population growth or your subject. You know, you're no longer a public servant. You're a hedge fund with classes. And so why shouldn't you pay the same taxes a hedge fund pays? So I do think we need incentive to broaden the freshman class size. What really fucked this up? The Business Week university rankings. Because one of the criteria is selectivity. And the higher you go in the rankings, the more inbound applications you get, the more selective you can become.

12:34Scott Galloway:The ranking goes up and you start this upward death spiral. So the LVMH-ing of the university system encourages universities to sequester supply. Dartmouth has an$8 billion endowment. They let in, I think, 1 ,100 students. And it's in the middle of nowhere. They could let in 5 ,000 and they wouldn't have to sacrifice quality and they have the money to do it. But they're Dartmouth. They see themselves as a luxury brand, not as a public servant, which is their decision. But if they're going to make the decision to be a luxury brand and not a public servant, they should pay the same taxes that a private company pays, I believe.

13:10Scott Galloway:But also that it has gotten too expensive to engage in what is the primary upward lubricant of income mobility, and that is education. So the key is how do we encourage universities to expand their freshman class size? In my view, the kind of big, beautiful bill, or I didn't like the student debt relief plan that Biden put forward. I know it's populist and it would be great just to wipe out people's debt, but all that does is increase education prices. What do I mean by that? If you relieve that debt and the consumer, the student, and their families stop shopping for the best deal because who knows, take out debt and someday it might be wiped away.

13:52Scott Galloway:I think it creates moral hazard where people don't think about the debt they're taking out. They don't shop around for the best tuition and prices keep going up. Also, I just think it sucks to be a grown-up. If you're one of the third of Americans that had an opportunity to go to college and you borrow money, I don't think the other two-thirds that weren't given the opportunity to go to college should bail you out. What should have been done, in my view, with that$750 billion would be a grand bargain with the university system. Grow your freshman class 4 % a year, reduce tuition 2 % a year, and we'll give you the top 750 universities on average a billion dollars to expand your freshman class size, invest in technology, invest in new types of certification.

14:34Scott Galloway:What does that do? It means in 10 years, you've effectively on an inflation adjusted basis cut tuition at half and doubled the university population or the freshman class size. And some, we want to go back to the future to when I went to college and tuition was manageable and admissions was reasonable. So we need to stop hoarding these endowments, spending it on planned property and equipment that expands freshman class size. In addition for that capital to do these things, I think other types of, say, 20 % nontraditional certificates. So more vocational programming, different types of certification.

15:15Scott Galloway:I think there's a lot that could be done here in terms of tax policy that encourages them to spend some of that endowment. So this is something I think a lot about. I've given my quote-unquote philanthropic efforts are focused on two areas, teen suicide prevention and by far, though, expanding freshman class size or opportunities for students at great public schools. I think another message from Democrats needs to be, don't go after universities for, I don't know, because they're woke. Go after them because they're not letting in enough people. There's still no, if we had a drug that reduced suicide rates by 60%, increased your likelihood of getting married by 80%, cut in half the likelihood you would kill yourself, massively increased the likelihood that you decided to run for public office, doubled your income.

16:08Scott Galloway:If we had that pill, would we hoard that pill? Would we let the cost of that drug quadruple? Well, we have that pill. It's called higher education. And all this bullshit narrative you hear from people that people don't need college anymore because of AI, that means Susie just blew the ACT because college, in my view, has never been more important to figuring out the critical thinking skills to control and leverage AI. Anywho, in sum, we need to stop hoarding what is a life-changing drug called higher education and figure out tax policies that encourage them to lower their costs, encourage them to expand their freshman seats.

16:48Scott Galloway:And in sum, our strategy should be go back to the future here where unremarkable kids with 3.1 GPAs and 1130 on the SAT can get into a great school and show up to UCLA freshman year with$60 to their name and figure out a way to work their way through college? Thanks for the question. We'll be right back after a quick break.

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21:00Welcome back. Question number three is from Arthur on Instagram.

21:04Scott Galloway:What do you see as the future of undergraduate degrees? What will be worth pursuing in a few years? Hmm, all right. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates aged 22 to 27 ended 2025 at 5.6%, well above the 4.2 % overall rate and the highest December level for recent grads since 2020. This is unusual. Typically, the unemployment rate is much greater for non-college grads. It's the first time it's flipped in a while. That's probably a good thing. Among employed recent grads, 43 % were working in jobs that don't require a college degree. That's the greatest share since 2020. Since late 2022, early career workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed occupations, including software development, customer service, and accounting, have seen a 13 % relative decline in employment, while workers 30-plus in the same field saw employment grow 6 to 12%.

21:55Scott Galloway:According to a Gallup poll, 42 % of bachelor degree students have reconsidered their major because of AI. 16 % of currently enrolled students have already changed their major because of AI's potential to impact. Men are more likely than women to have done so, 21 % versus 12%. That's probably CS degrees that tend to attract more men are switching out as computer scientists. They probably hated, but thought that would get them an easy$100 ,000 job. In 2024, nearly 630 ,000 job postings required at least one AI skill, up from 0.5 % of all postings in 2010 to 2 % in 2024, and spreading beyond tech and engineering business and management roles.

22:35Scott Galloway:The average trade school program costs$5 ,000 to$20 ,000 in total compared to$30 ,000 in student loan debt for the average bachelor's degree borrower. And some of them are starting to be better values because the salaries are just as high. And trade grads entered the workforce two to three years earlier. The welding industry alone needs, get this, 320 ,000 new professionals by 2029, with 160 ,000 currently nearing retirement. Takeaway, computer science is in a weird middle position, still valuable long-term, but oversupplied at the early level entry right now or entry jobs right now. And humanities generalist degrees are under genuine structural pressure that predates AI because they're expensive to get and you don't come out with an automatic signal around who's supposed to hire you.

23:22So what do I think?

23:24Scott Galloway:I think your job in your 20s and when you're in college is to find something you could be great at. I think it's okay to be a classics major or, you know, English lit, as long as you're really good at it, because if you can write well, I think you can get a good job. I think the fastest growing job in tech is comms. So I think trying to predict where the puck is headed is really difficult. If you have a predisposition towards STEM and science, I still think most business and almost everything ultimately verse engineers to biology and chemistry. So I think those are pretty good degrees to have.