Its usually a teacher and its not some president or whatever. Its someone you may know personally so you can foster a closer relationship in your organization that will inherently create those innovative organizations that rely on people is the foundation i really like the iceberg analogy and i would go back to where he started in terms of whats important for Young Professionals looking. I think what lies below that surface i am not a tech die. I am impressed by really good design that solves a practical problem and i dont claim to know a lot in the tech field but Critical Thinking and what i mean when i say that how do we go about solving problems is one of those skills that lie below the surface lion. The second i think his appreciation of diversity that we dont have the answers and we may have to go to places where the thinking is different than our own and the things we disagree with and take on viewpoints that we are uncomfortable with in order to learn and the third would be for Emotional Intelligence and the fourth is looking at leadership. You said there are beacons and places and folks that are natural allies that you should seek al. Theyre going to want to talk to you i think and they are going to want to listen to your ideas. One more question. Actually i have a question. I was wondering if the panelists could give their personal opinion on what the most important shortterm barriers are or shortterm problems facing innovation for National Security . I think the fact that there is fear to spend money on innovation even though it will have longterm results and i will give an example. This was brought up to me today. Specific Program Managers are afraid of applying l. E. D. Technology because in the shortterm it costs more and they are evaluated specifically on a oneyear timeframe for money even though the system cant cut a lifetime system that l. E. D. Lights will save thousands of hours in replacement costs. That is not they stick with legacy systems. If you were to spend money right now it would save you money in the long runs. To piggyback on that i come from industry and even an Industry Innovation takes a long time to end up with the widgets in the gadgets. Lets look at cars. Cell phones have been ubiquitous in peoples hands for a long time. Finally in 2014 models are starting to everett ties the cell phone holder next to the cupholder. That is not even technological and evasion. Its just someone that says im designing a car and i will just kind of peace over that okay so this is industry. This is a buildup industry from detroit that says what is competing with the best of the best so its just a mindset or look at tablets. Tablets have been ubiquitous for a long time but you know legacy systems Like Airlines and car manufactures are just starting to put them into to adopt them. Now if industry competes with a lot of other competitors internationally it takes this long to bring these Technological Innovations and adopt them with their products the government is the monopoly takes a little bit longer. So the biggest challenge that i see and thank you that was a great question is how do you keep Quality Control but find a way to rush the market or whatever the appropriate terminology is for the government technologies or even just nonTechnological Innovations that could help make your product or your service better. I would just simply say i think we covered it earlier. The egger span is the fear of failure and not being able to learn from failure and that i think goes through government in terms of personnel systems, in terms of being able to admit when a program isnt working and the risks are so high and it jeopardizes careers and jeopardizes programs and jeopardizes your ability to continue working. But what did you learn in life . People patting you on the back or that was not the best way to do something. Heres a better way. You will have another chance to prove yourself again. Thats a tract as we take from our personal life that we dont apply in our professional lives because their constraints are so great. Before i turn it back over to eric i wanted to remark on one key point that im going to take away from this which is that you know the title is almost daunting in some ways. It sounds like its trying to solve a big problem, a big important problem. What i am coming away with is what i have heard from the panelists and the impetus and the questions i have heard from you on the importance of the human dimension, on their relationships, on the individual passionate commitments come to on almost the na desire to be playful and collaborative at work. And this is wonderfully simple. You know on the suggestions we heard from the panelists to go back to your workplace is incredibly powerful in its simplicity. So i just wanted to thank the panelists for letting me leave here at little bit more optimistic about this and for their Great Questions from you all and thank you again for allowing me to be part of it. Thank you beth and how about a round of applause for her distinguished moderator. [applause] i think we all have a greater understanding now about the challenges but more importantly the opportunities for innovation and National Security and foreignpolicy and while we may have more questions than answers right now asking those tough questions amongst a group of people i guess is really the first step about the innovations that we desire. I would just like to thank everyone. Csis, cspan the moderator and the great panelists all of you for being here and really contributing to such a great conversation. I really appreciate it and i hope that you can join us around the corner at 91919 street where we will try to continue to discussion in a more informal setting. Have a great night. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] very often what you see as the causes of the first lady becomes so entwined with her image that she keeps that cause and that image. The rest of her life. We could talk about roslyn and her commitment to Mental Health and we could talk about barbara bush and her commitment to litters the enter foundation. Betty ford and her commitment to sobriety and addiction. s former education secretary William Bennett on whether the cost of college is worth the expense. He spoke about the state of Higher Education at an event hosted by the American Enterprise institute. Its an hour and 15 minutes. We are going to begin. We are delighted you are all here and ladies and gentlemen good afternoon and welcome to our book event. Built in it and David Wilezols new book, the is College Worth it . Here it is. If you havent bought a copy already we hope you will from our family booksellers. I am alex pollack a resident fellow at aei and this will be my pleasure to introduce our speakers today. We are coming up on the 151st anniversary of the moral act which was enacted july 2, 18621 of the remarkable achievements under the Lincoln Administration in addition to fighting the civil war and a landmark in Higher Education. It begins and acts donating public lands to provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts. Granted to several states and amount of public land for support and maintenance of at least one college with the leading object shall be to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes and several pursuits and professions of life. It seems to me that they knew exactly what they were about in 1862. That may be less through for us today. We have gone from a society where about one 40th of young people went to college a century ago. To where about twothirds are pursuing some form of education after high school and this obviously changes everything in the economics of Higher Education. And it seems to have produced as todays book suggests, a debtfinanced let of va holders. Many of us like bill and david did have noticed parallels to our recent debtfinanced glut of houses and condos when it comes to Higher Education finance. Debt financing is especially a problem if what is being financed his consumption, not investment. If as it has been suggested, for a large number of students Compact College is not investment but consumption four fun filled filled years before they have to settle down to a adult life. These and many more interesting and challenging problems of College Education and college invocation Runaway College costs and the debt explosion financing them are discussed in this insightful and practical book. For bill and david like the authors the moral act who want their work to be practical and useful and i think it will be. In addition to the discussion today, we invite all of you to come back this following monday june 24 for a e. Is related conference on the trillion dollar question reinventing Student Financial aid and this will start at 9 00 in the morning on monday and we hope to see you there. Today bill and david will present their book for about 20 to 25 minutes and the discussants will speak about 10 minutes each and we will give the authors a chance to respond to any comments clarifications or arguments and we will open the floor to for your questions. We are going to adjourn at one time go 45 for a coffee reception and book signing and we hope you will stay for that. Is College Worth it . Will be on sale and we hope you will buy a copy. Let me introduce our authors. Bill bennett as you know is one of americas most influential voices on cultural, political and education issues. Hes the senior pfizer to project lead the way and on the Advisory Board of a chief education adviser to be in stock innovation. He is taught at Boston University the university of texas at harvard and served as secretary of education under president reagan and was americas first drug czar under president george h. W. Bush. It was the author of more than 24 books including to New York Times number one bestsellers and the host of the old bennetts morning in america and has received more than 30 honorary degrees and as a final note a very long time ago bill and i were philosophy students together at Williams College. Bill will speak in a minute. He will be followed by David Wilezol the coauthor of is College Worth it . David is the associate producer of the nationally syndicated bill bennetts morning in america and a contributor to the manhattan institutes Higher Education policy blog and at Claremont Institute fellow and studied greek and latin at the Catholic University in washington. In his honor i tried to come up with an appropriate latin quote for addressing student debt and i suggest that is happy is he who has no debt. [laughter] thats good. [laughter] ski thank you. Bill and david we look forward to your presentation of this provocative look and bill we welcome you to the aei podium. [applause] thank you alex. We were in the same class with the same major of philosophy were it not for the honor system i wouldnt have copied from alexis blue books. We had final exams and we had saturday classes. Remember that . I wont describe the book. I will describe some basic familiarity with it and describe the high points in brief remarks. One of the things we said at the very beginning of the book combat the very beginning of the book is that twothirds of the people who graduate from high school and immediately enroll in a Fouryear College probably do Something Else and we talk about various options Like Community college or get a job for a year or two or military or other things. We say this based on what we have read and what the data says including such facts as 46 of people who start Fouryear Colleges dont finish in six to eight years. So that is one of the reasons we say it erie there are other reasons to map. A lot of reaction to this book, has some interesting and some not so interesting that it has gotten a ton of reviews. I think we have had some kind of a nerve and that discussion is going on and a debate will follow, a good debate i hope alex and everyone else. One of the interesting responses came from a guy who wrote from california who said i have triplets and they are 14 and we have been grooming them for stanford but having read your book that the return on investment is i am steering the three of them to harvey mudd. I hope to hear from harvey mudd and i hope to get some kind of fear percentage for this. The other was from a recent graduate of North CarolinaState University is that im afraid what you said about the liberal arts is entirely true. He said i finished a four year program and i wont mention the college. A four year program at a very wellknown liberal arts college and he said i realized i have learned absolutely nothing. He didnt say part of the problem humanities and social sciences as we were talking about before is they have changed so dramatically. Its one of the reasons they are not worth as much as they used to be but after finishing four years of liberal arts college he said ive been enrolled as a freshman at North CarolinaState University in nuclear engineering. And he graduated at 25. He wrote me at 27 and he said a fouryear mistake that i had a good time. [laughter] i said i know that. That i know. That much i know about liberal arts colleges that you had a good time. Other reactions. Alex and i were getting lots of invitations to go to campus forms on the said stanford and other things. Its delightful to get. Maybe the funniest one from university and i dont think she will mind me telling is Heather Wilson who is a former congressman from new mexico an astronaut. She wrote me from the south Dakota School of for which we have great praise in the book. She said please come to the winter commencement in rapid city. One is that . December 21 in rapid city. I said maybe not. She said recognize we dont have much of a budget to pay you because you know they just dont pay me much. My salary public informatiinformati on is 62,500 they average graduate is 63,500. I said take up a collection from your recent graduates and send me a fee. I will go in december. A report from the Brookings Institution surely after a book came out written by Stephanie Bai saw still echo the main themes from the book and we were glad to here that because a couple of people said they hoped they could characterize the book is a rightwing diatribe which its not. We are delighted to hear this from the Brookings Institution. They said the following, college can be worth of providing the Student Graduate studies the right subject and those for that student to the right school. This is very much along the lines are we wrote in a recent editorial. College can still be worth it if majoring in the right subject at the right price at the right place which is a major factor from the perspective of the individual. The Brookings Institution report i saw hill and over and said this in part. Theres an enormous variation to the socalled return on education depending on factors such as institution attended field of study whether a Student Graduates and postgraduation occupation. While the average return average return, not the median return an average return we emphasize is not universally so. We are certain schools majors occupations and individuals college may not need the smart investment through telling all young people to go to college and matter what which is a pretty loud message we are actually doing some of them a disservice. That is pretty interesting closed quote. The second i would make is we talk a lot about this denham subjects and the s. T. E. M. Job Science Technology and to nehring and math and we say this as outsiders. Im a philosophy major and david is a classics major. Which one is more pathetic in getting a job after college is tough competition. I returned to the university of texas where i got my ph. D. In philosophy and went to the jobs Bulletin Board in the ole thing up there was a notice from the department of labor about minimum wage and what youre entitled to. It didnt look so promising out there. So i saw student walked by and kelly is a philosophy student so i know what they look like. I was one once. I said how are you doing . He said fine. I got made ph. D. Here. He said hows that working out for you . I said fine, that i have a radio show. He said thats good. Thats dialogue. Thats tradition. I hope it is. Anyway we talk a lot about s. T. E. M. Jobs he could spare the jobs it seems that are very much worth it and they of course have studied is quite worth it. We based some of the conclusions we came up with in the book on the return on investment on a pay scale from the year 2012 to 2013 the