Why Build A University

Mat 0:00

I've probably met two other people in my life that have established universities.

Don 0:04

Education is always that great equalizer.

Mat 0:07

It's more than an equalizer.

Fahim 0:08

It actually gives you social mobility.

Mat 0:10

What is the purpose of a university in the first place? Why does a university even exist? That's a really important question because then it kind of defines everything that that institution will do.

Degrees Under Pressure Again

Magnus 0:30

Welcome back to the Mastering Podcast. Most of us spend our whole lives inside institutions we didn't build. Schools, universities, companies. A few people spend their lives trying to improve them. Almost no one builds one from scratch. 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. We ran out of road before we reached the part we're most curious about, America. So we promised a part two. This is it. And it lands at a moment when the value of a degree is being questioned harder than it has been in a generation. With me to host who pushed this episode from day one, entrepreneur, master's athlete, and chief revenue officer in global education, Mr. Don San Sanka. 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. And dialing in from Los Angeles, where he's preparing for the next graduation of Kennedy University of Leadership, Matt Jacobson. 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. Matt, welcome back to the Mastering Podcast, mate.

Mat 2:14

Great to be here again.

Why America Beats Australia

Magnus 2:15

So, Matt, you partly left us building a private university in Australia, and that was almost impossible. Why did you go to America to build it?

Mat 2:25

Well, yes, that's a good uh way to frame it. It is almost impossible to build a private university in Australia. Uh, there are a couple of private universities in Australia, but only a couple. That's quite rare. So, in a lot of countries around the world, in Asia, in the UK, you'll have a mix of private and public institutions. Um, the Australian marketplace is dominated by public institutions. So you're already at a disadvantage being a private institution. 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. But in any marketplace, it's good to have competition and it's good to have variety and options. So having private institutions and public universities actually creates a different dynamic. It creates competition, but it's just not a model that really exists in Australia. If you wanted to do it, it would cost far too much money, um, take maybe 15 years. I mean, that's not something that commercial organizations typically look at a 15-year time horizon. 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.

Don 3:43

Matt, you've had years of experience delivering um university degrees, um, but building your own university is a whole new ball game. Um, where do where does someone even start?

Where You Even Start

Mat 3:55

Yeah, look, it's definitely not a common thing to do at all. 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. 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. Um, so it's not a common thing to do for various reasons. But where do you start? 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. So there are some actually attractive EU marketplaces to establish a university or at least a higher education uh institution. But that's number one. 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. Every country in the world has a similar body. 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. And those rules differ greatly by different jurisdictions. So it's not a kind of universal question of how do you set up a university. 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. 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. But it is uh in anywhere in the world a very difficult, challenging, regulated environment to establish an institution.

Fahim 5:55

What were your expectations going into the whole thing? And did you were you surprised by anything?

Mat 6:00

Well, that's a good question. Like what are the expectations? Well, why would you do it in the first place? Why would you want to start a university? 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? Why would SpaceX start a rocket company? You know, NASA existed before SpaceX and there was taxis in every country in the world. So why do you need Uber? Um, so I guess the imperative is really are things done in a way that meets the need of the current market? And the answer generally is no. And without naming any names, these are partners of ours. 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. And, you know, he gave an example, it's just what you hear all the time. And he said, Well, I'm trying to change something and I'm just getting resistance within the university. And he said, Every time I ask a question, why are we doing this? the answer is because that's how we've always done it. And that is just a terribly poor answer to a question. 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. 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. And unfortunately, that kind of leads into the bureaucratic mindset that you often see with particularly public institutions, but also just very large institutions. Doesn't matter if it's a huge hundred-year-old tech company. We might think tech companies are much more commercially minded and nimble. Well, probably on average they are. 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. So for me, it was more about how do you design a university environment that actually meets future needs. 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. But then how far does that go? You set up so many rules and so many common processes that you're actually stifling innovation and change. So having that balance between protection, consumer protections, which is important, but allowing for innovation and change is a difficult balance to manage.

Magnus 8:46

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. 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. What I'm curious about, what's the biggest challenge that you went through in trying to build this university from scratch?

What A University Is For

Mat 9:12

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. So what attracts them to an organization like ours is that we are innovative and disruptive. However, they still are generally coming from that mindset of the way universities do things. 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. And this is a whole philosophical debate. I know we talked about this a little bit in the last segment as well. But what is the purpose of a university in the first place? Why does a university even exist? That's a really important question because then it kind of defines everything that that institution will do. Now, most universities are not there to cater for the needs of students. They might say they are, but they're really not. Um, and everything they do shows that they're not really there in the interests of students. So what are they there for? Isn't a university there to teach students? No. 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. Universities love academic rankings and moving up the academic rankings, none of which really have anything to do with student career outcomes. So if that's your goal, you're going on a certain tangent. 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. We don't care about how many journal publications an academic might publish in a year. 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? How is this going to help a student progress in their current job? How is this going to help a student get a pay rise? Those are student-centric outcomes. And that is fundamentally at odds with what the majority, not all, but what the majority of universities are designed to do. That's not even a criticism. It's not a problem as long as it's transparent and disclosed. 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. And if you like that style, come to us. Maybe you want to become an academic. Fantastic. But the majority of students are going to a university for a career outcome. 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? And there's not some general vague, oh, I'm looking for worldly knowledge and I want to get into academia one day. 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. So is the system catering for the needs of their customer? Universities don't really use the term customer, but that's what they are. 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? It is at odds.

Research Rankings Versus Jobs

Magnus 12:49

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. Was it always a goal to become an accountant and Don? To get a job?

Fahim 13:01

Yeah. I did accounting, finance, and economics. So plan was to work in the business world in some way, shape, or form. And those degrees seemed to ring true for me. So it was to get the baseline level of knowledge that I need to get a job. So yeah, that was definitely it. I think what I will say to Matt's point, though, is uh a couple of things. Um and for full disclosure, I am a professor at one of these larger universities in Australia as well. So um I don't represent the university today. I'm uh speaking truly on my own. 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. Um, the other thing to note as well is I think the brand helped me get a job. 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.

Don 14:06

That's still relevant, the brand?

Fahim 14:08

Uh it is in the Silicon Valley. I don't know if you heard the story in Silicon Valley. 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.

Magnus 14:19

So I I know that's very prominent in in Australia as far as the private school sector goes. 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.

Fahim 14:32

I would argue that's more the network than the university. 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. But I don't know. I don't know.

Don 14:44

I I'm I'm uh in two minds here. Now the the world's progressing really fast. Things are changing really quickly. We're still in that mindset of again, you know, our it could be our age demographic as well. 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.

Fahim 15:08

I don't think it will. I think if NVIDIA opened a university tomorrow.

Don 15:11

Yeah, people will, yeah. 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. Yeah. Um, and that model that was from the 1800s, and I don't think we've changed that. And that was a Oprussian model.

Fahim 15:37

Now pick on Matt's point earlier about it not being a criticism, and I 100% agree it's not a criticism. I think we have to acknowledge that everything we teach today and everything we do in business today came from some form of research. Okay, so balance scorecards, profit and loss, fraud. There has been a ton of research. We may not have used all of the research, but we've used elements of it to do what we do today. I agree.

Don 16:01

Even though you look at business learning borders five fours, it came from it.

Fahim 16:04

All of that came from research, right? So there is a place for research. 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. And I I'm really fascinated to hear Matt's story about how he's doing it, I guess.

Mat 16:27

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. But it's hard to see why teaching and research are combined. It's not very clear that there's a straight line between career vocational outcomes and research agendas. Um, and then a lot of the examples, even that you know, we were just throwing around before are international examples. 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. It's absolutely terrible. 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. Um now you do have commercialization much stronger in other markets. Israel is a really good example of that. The US, of course, is a good example. There's good examples out of Germany and and other European markets. 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. Now, of course, there's some examples that people throw around, but I'm talking about ROI and value for money. 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? Now, at the same time, you've got population that wants to increase their skills, um, their employability. 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. Um, you know, there's a lot of things that are politically charged but aren't necessarily true. So there's a big uh decline and cut in international students. A lot of that is motivated by political agendas, xenophobia, because people think that foreigners are stealing Australian places. 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. It's not a zero-sum game. It's not, there's only two seats available, so if we give them to foreigners, we can't give them to Australians. You've got billions of dollars in investment in infrastructure to allow for greater access. 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. And the research agenda is very, very politically charged. It's seen as very valuable, but is it really delivering the results? I'm not sure. The US model is not a better model necessarily. There's immense challenges in the US model. But it's a different model. You do not have to do research as a university. You can be purely focused on delivering student outcomes. And you could be a university that's almost entirely focused on research output. But you've got a choice. In Australia, that doesn't exist. You have universities that are trying to enroll tens of thousands of students while simultaneously running a large research agenda. So um there should be more specialization and less commonality across all universities.

Space Leadership And Industry Learning

Don 20:02

Matt, just um looking at what you're doing, I I I'm just curious. I want to know why Kennedy and your first two um programs that you brought out was in in space leadership. Um, what made you go down that path?

Mat 20:17

So that's an exact uh example of student-centric, career-focused outcomes. So the space sector is a massive industry, it's a growing industry, it has critical importance in the real world. I'm not talking about in research agendas, in the real world. So every phone that all of you have is using satellite and space technology. 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. But there was no course, there was no MBA in space leadership. And so you've got very, very technically bright space sector engineers. 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. 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. Sorry, you could be building the best satellite technology capability in the world. 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. All you have is a smart technology, but you don't have a business. And you want to create a business. 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. So that's just a good example of Kennedy University. 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. And that wasn't really there. And I think it's true that yes, some universities are, you know, seeing the need to evolve and move. And they are, but it is a little bit of a snail's pace. It's like trying to move an oil tanker. So you'll have things like a capstone. Fantastic. That is great. Universities think it's really great to engage with industry. Ask any student what they thought about their capstone project in their degree. I'd be willing to bet that every student will say that was like the best thing I did in my degree. It was so cool. It was really interesting. We had to work with a real company, come up with a real solution. So that's great. But then my question is, why is that one assignment in one class in your entire degree? Why aren't you designing a degree with an apprenticeship style model where the years that you're studying are integrating with industry?

Magnus 23:42

So, Matt, that capstone project, is that something that's exclusive to your university or is that mainstream?

Mat 23:49

No. 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. But if you're doing a three-year degree, you'll probably have a capstone project in your entire degree. 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. And that real-world integration, students really thrive and like it and can see the value and the benefit. So they'll talk very highly of that. 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. They said, I'm not staying in a university that's telling me I need to buy a textbook from 1990. 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. 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. That happens in hospitals, it should be happening across the entire university spectrum.

Magnus 25:19

I'm keen to hear Fahim's thoughts around that, around the capstone project. Is that something that you're involved in? And is there anything that you're involved in currently as a professor?

Fahim 25:28

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. And I'm actually quite heavily involved in that. 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. Um from the capstein perspective, there's various models going around. 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. Various universities are trying this. And but as Matt said, I think it's on the agenda, but you are kind of restrained to the system, right? 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. Like there's a bigger system at play here. 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. And that's probably the advantage, and that's probably why Matt's sitting in America and we're sitting here in Brisbane right

Regulation Without Killing Innovation

Fahim 26:34

now.

Don 26:34

Aaron Powell So is that is that bureaucratic model is that gonna hinder us? Because you know, universities are fundamental to creating the future of the Australian talent. Um and and to a greater extent global talent, like at what point do we run this?

Fahim 26:52

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. If we're restricting them out and if we're restricting innovation, then yes. So the example I'll give is we mentioned Uber earlier, right? So Uber came in, decided to break every law under the sun and just in the name of convenience sell something to us, right? And we all saw, yep, this is a benefit. The bureaucracy of taxis, uh the regulation of taxis, all that was a problem. Here's a much better model that works for us, right? The one thing that we all don't know is taxis are regulated to offer a certain number of taxis at 2 a.m. in the morning on the road. 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. Uber will never do that. 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? So we we gotta get the right balance. 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. It's just where we get that right or not.

Don 28:00

Yeah, regulation is important and you've got to always protect that side of it by doing it right. And and I guess that's where the challenge comes in, especially in Australia.

Fahim 28:09

I think we just need honest advocacy. I think and if your advocacy and Matt, you can listen to Matt, right? Like he's talking about the student and the job, he's not talking about himself, right? Like it's like we just need honest advocacy. As long as we have honest advocacy and we as a society can have a broad open discussion about it, that'll be fine. 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.

Mat 28:32

Um, that is absolutely a challenge. 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. Now, nothing in what I just said says that that's a good thing. It just is factual about they displaced the taxi industry. There's a lot of very bad things about that displacement. It used to be that if you were a taxi driver, you had to be registered, you have to be licensed. Now, who's picking you up in an Uber? God knows who's picking you up. You've got no idea, it's just some dude that decided to download the Uber app. 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. Is that a good thing? Well, there's a lot of problems with that. So you've got a lot of issues on the university side of being overly bureaucratic and overly regulated and stifling innovation. 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. 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. So I think that's the balance that is really challenging. And the balance isn't just putting the blame on the government. Um, it is honestly at the university level and the government, because there's so much bureaucracy within a university. Now, in the US, for example, you do a bachelor's degree, just giving you an example. 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? You've got to do history classes and maths classes. 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? It makes no sense. Just focus on the career outcome. But they're the rules, and you can't get around those rules. 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? So we can kind of make it math but relevant. They're like, yeah, that's fine, you can do that. 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. 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. 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. Um, the regulators are actually often quite practical and have logical reasons why the regulations are there. 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. It's like, oh, okay, yeah, I guess that would work. So there's uh, you know, some definitely harder thinking that's needed there.

Migration Stories And Social Mobility

Don 31:28

What was the personal toll in doing this? Um, we talked a little bit about your childhood in the last episode and your entrepreneurial drive. What was the personal toll for you moving to the US? It's not just moving to another town, right?

Mat 31:42

Yeah, right. Um no, I wouldn't say it's a personal tall. I mean, you can probably see my background here. 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.

Magnus 31:54

In the background, what's that pink thing that's sticking up? Yeah. So we've all been we've all been very curious about sitting here. What is it? I'm not gonna tell you what I think.

Mat 32:04

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. Yes, it's the uh pink flamingo with the Santa Monica Mountains behind there. So this is a beautiful part of uh California, Santa Monica Mountains, there's hiking trails right there, and yeah, it's really beautiful. So, yes, it's a definite challenge like for anyone that's migrated to a different country. 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? So I'm doing it because for me it's exciting and it's a challenge and it's interesting. 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? We don't like complaints, oh, this is easy. I just turn up and I just fill in these forms every day and I can go home. That's not an entrepreneurial mindset. You're just too bored that you just can't do it anymore. You've got to find something that's the next big thing that's interesting to look into and work on. So I wouldn't necessarily look at it as a toll personally. Are there challenges? Oh, absolutely. 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. 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. Um, we have students with various types of learning disabilities that said they tried other universities. 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. A student in Australia just got accepted into a PhD program. They did a bachelor with us, they did a master's with us, they've just been accepted into a PhD. Um, and this woman sent me an amazing like letter of thank you saying I never would have even got my bachelor's. So this is exciting, is what I'm saying. 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? Why can't you just get the skill and do the work? That's kind of a whole really interesting debate in itself. But in that context, it was like, this degree changed my life. Like, how awesome that we can be a part of that.

Magnus 34:49

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. And also you, Don, coming from a background in Sri Lanka to Australia, what was that transition and what were those challenges like?

Fahim 35:10

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? So it's not like I experienced poverty, I just saw it around me. Okay. Uh so my dad was born in Bangladesh, I'm born in Bangladesh as well. And dad probably hit had the poverty story, right? 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. And I think he graduated in 1981, and then 12 years later, he got a job in South Africa. And South Africa had apartheid at the time. So apart Nelson Mandela, I think, became president in 94. So we had about one year when white South Africa and non-white South Africa was basically separate countries, effectively. And so dad's job was only in a part of South Africa called Transkai. And it was like this remote village, right? Uh, like I think it was 40 met 40 minutes of gravel road before we got to our house, right? And dad was the doctor at the local hospital there. And there was only one school in that tiny little village. And fun fact, uh, Nelson Mandela's village home was 20 minutes down the road. So my parents actually got to meet him before he became president as well, which is pretty cool. Um, and yeah, so there was one tiny school just down the road from home, uh, four classrooms, no running water. Well, I think there was a tap, but that's what it no sinks or anything like that. And no flushing toilets, definitely. I still remember vividly. It's just holes in the ground, basically. Um, and yeah, that was it. That was the world I grew up in for one year. I went to uh got exposed to that schooling system. I got to see what forced disadvantage looks like uh on you. It wasn't no one was there by choice. It was that was all that was was available. Uh, but what stood out were the teachers. Like the teachers dedicated their time to make sure these kids had a hope in life, right? And including myself. They adapted for me. 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.

Magnus 37:14

And we've got something in common there. 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.

Fahim 37:24

So how long did it take you?

Magnus 37:25

And oh I don't know. I have no vivid recollection of that. 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. But I'm curious, when you arrived in Australia, where did you land and what schools did you go to?

Fahim 37:49

Yeah, uh so there's just one more story there. When South Africa became South Africa, we then moved to the better part of South Africa. 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. Well, in the space of 13 months, right? So that was the switch. 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. Tony Gregg, the Australian cricket commentator, went to my school. So uh that's our claim to fame. Essentially.

Magnus 38:24

Two claims to fame. Okay.

Fahim 38:26

Um, so I was there till about halfway through year 11. Uh, and I my parents decided to move to Australia. So we ended up in Mackay in central Queensland. And um, and I went to a small private school there, uh class of 50 in grade 12, and it was really lovely. 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. Great story.

Don 38:51

I've got to say as well, I I never really I I can't claim to have grown in poverty. I had I was quite fortunate. 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. Um education is always that great equalizer. Like anyone has an opportunity. I think you know you're you are you know you are who you are in a lucky country.

Magnus 39:19

So I thought sport was a great equalizer.

Don 39:22

It is.

Magnus 39:22

It is as well.

Don 39:24

It gives you the opportunity, but it doesn't give everyone with a I guess it's the same thing as well. 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. Well, and that's where I think education, institutionalized or not, gives you that opportunity to demonstrate.

Fahim 39:47

I think it's more than an equalizer, it actually gives you social mobility. You get to leave whatever is destined for you at one level, right? Um You obviously have to work harder. There's people who will have more advantage than you and things like that. But at the very least, it gives you an opportunity to get on. My dad's the best example of it, probably.

Magnus 40:04

Do you agree with that, Matt?

Mat 40:06

Yeah, look, absolutely. And that comes back to the question, I think, of why a university and why do you need a degree? And it's because it does allow for social mobility in a way that nothing else does. Um, so you know, hats off to people who want to be a professional soccer player. You know, we're all probably watching the World Cup right now. Um, you want to be uh, you know, a professional athlete like Don. Um, you want to be a singer or an actor. Fantastic. That's great. But let's be realistic. You know, one in a million kind of make it to the big leagues. Um, but anyone really can get access to higher education, and really pretty much anyone can if they want to. 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. 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. Um, you can do it if you are determined enough. 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. You know, we can all talk about, oh, you know, should you waste time going to university? It's gonna take years, is it really worth the investment? Blah, blah, blah. Um, these stats are everywhere across the board. 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. That's a lot of money. 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. You're gonna earn between 75 and 77% more annual income by not having than someone that doesn't have a master's degree. So those credentials are really important. And if you want to access a degree, there are ways to do it. 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. I do understand the difficulties. 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. There's still community colleges which are virtually free that you can go and study. 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.

AI, Cheating, And Better Assessment

Magnus 42:36

Let's talk about AI. At the moment, we're looking at how that's going to change the university system. If a machine can write the assignment, the essay, where does that leave the the the certification of a degree? Where do you think that's uh taking us? And what's the future of university degrees in amongst AI? I'm really curious to hear from Fahim on this one because he's a a professor in the subject.

Fahim 43:10

Look, you could cheat before AI. You could get your big brother to do your assignment for you as well. So that's for cheap labor, right? So that's always been there. Like I know everyone suddenly thinks, oh, now they're going to cheat. I'm like, if they wanted to cheat, they could have cheated, right? It's five bucks to get an assignment done overseas, right? Like so well, having said that, the temptation to obviously take a shortcut, just not in university, in our lives, right now. 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. At some point that's going to have a price to pay for ourselves as well, right? So if we don't use a certain muscle too often, it'll go, right? 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. 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. 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. Um, but that won't be the objective. 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. Now, the hack way, I I keep saying this as a bit of a joke. The easiest way to hack this is to change the pass mark. So the average pass mark right now is 50%. We could make the pass mark 90% as an overnight hack, right? 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. Okay. Uh, that's obviously not the long-term solution. This real solution is let me change my assignment in a way where I'm assessing your thinking rather than the output itself.

Don 44:59

How do you build a university in a post-AI world? I think that's the most important part, right? How do you now build a university in this world?

Mat 45:11

Okay. How many hours did you say we've got for this podcast? Um so uh that's like a lot, a lot that uh we could be talking about. But I think everything that Fahim said is just absolutely spot on, totally agree with. Um so from an AI perspective, you know, and what you said, you know, Don as well, you can always cheat before, right? You just pay someone to do your assignment, get your brother to do your assignment. 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? So better examples are things like use of a scientific calculator, or things like the use of computers when computers became mainstream. So this is technology that's there. 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? Or do we think how do we actually utilize that technology because it's there and it's real? 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. But scientific calculators allow us to do much more complex mathematics. So, how do you use the technology as a tool and embrace to go further? And then you've got an arms race situation going on. So, of course, you've got, you know, kids that think, well, we could just put this in AI and get an assignment done. Well, great, that's easy. And yeah, you can just hand in your assignment, you don't have to do any work. 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. So it's a constant arms race. 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. You have to still be able to understand the concepts and explain the concepts and talk about their underpinning theory and whatever. So there's great ways to do that. Really easy. You can hand in an assignment and get a 50%, 80%, whatever, but okay, maybe you have to talk about it for five minutes. So explain to me. When you said point three, blah, blah, blah, what did you mean by that? And wouldn't this be a better way to do it? 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. If you're well, let me explain to you on point three. Um, initially the research was saying X, so I thought I was going in this direction. Okay, this person knows what they're talking about. They've analyzed it, they've listened, they've researched. 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. So, how do we use it to our advantage?

Fahim 47:58

Can I just add a couple of things to what Matt just said? I think the the one about the um talk about your assignment concept. Um, my hope, and this is my dream only, so I'm putting it out there, Matt. You can build it for me. Um, my hope is that the future assignment is a two-hour conversation or the future exam is a two-hour conversation with AI. 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. So it's a position of trust from the beginning. 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. This is genuinely an exercise in learning and development of you. And then we could build programs and bots that could kind of become your lifelong learning coach, essentially, right? That's where I'd love to go. 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. 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. 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. And I I'm backing humanity on this. 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. 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.

Don 49:32

We've we've always evolved, right? We've always been able to evolve. The problem's always been like any new technology. 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. 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. And I think that's the example of that. But Matt, just be careful. I know he said you can take it. He is an accountant, even though he's an academic. So if you get a bill in the mail, I want to watch the royalty after the podcast.

Magnus 50:10

You might get an invoice in your email. 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. So when you look at the apprenticeship model, I know that we've discussed that in the past, Matt. And as a as a as a carpenter, you do some theory, but then you're doing the practicality. 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. Uh Don mentioned before a few years ago I got my helicopter license, and it's exactly the same. There was a theory component, but then you've got to put the theory into practice in the cockpit and actually prove your competence. Well you can't you can't well you can't fly a helicopter with AI. So I think just I think that the education system just has to have a level of focus around competence. 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.

Mat 51:11

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's you know, that's spot on. And the competence really is the key because we talked about, you know, well, what if you're just using AI to cheat? Right? The AI writes you're assigned, so you're not learning anything. Well, what about exams? I mean, how good are exams? If I gave any of us an exam that we sat 20 years ago, how well do you think any of us would perform? 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. What use is that? It's not cheating, still useless. So the real question is how are you building competence? 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. 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. And no one knows why exams are there. Everyone just assumes that exams are a fundamental part of university and they must be great because every university does them. And no one even asks why are exams there. Well, the reason exams are there are for no education benefit whatsoever. 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. They just had to put a thousand people in the same room, giving them a standardized test. It's a terrible way to teach, but that's really all you could do at mass scale. It's like a sausage factory, it's not about quality learning. 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.

Africa Programs Built On The Ground

Magnus 53:12

No, well said. Let's change gears a little bit. I know that Don said in the past that the philanthropy behind you, Matt, is much bigger than the business itself. Mate, tell us what you're doing over in Africa.

Mat 53:24

Yeah, so we started our philanthropy at the same start, at the same time we started delivering education qualifications. So it was always a dual kind of process that we were going down. We started in Africa. We have so far impacted on 800,000 people across the African continent, 27 countries. Um, we've done a lot of work from the whole continent. I've traveled myself in um Northern Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, everywhere. Um, and we employ people to run projects. So we don't donate money to some big charity because there's too many problems with doing that. We run our own education programs. So that's always been a really, really important part of what we do. And there's all sorts of things that we've done across Africa, but that's broadened now to developing nations around the world. So we do scholarships for you really you just have to be in a developing nation. There's no even income test or assessment qualification that we do. If you come from a developing nation, we basically give you a scholarship. Um, and that's pretty exciting as well. And it goes back to that equalizer, you know, discussion we were having before. 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. I mean, you're on the ladder. But the hardest part sometimes is just to get that first break. 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. Matt, tell us a bit about what is our philanthropy.

Don 55:19

Tell us a bit about what you do with the Disser Foundation. I mean, you build a publishing house in Zambia. Um why why do you want to keep everything in-house? Why do you why are you doing it in that way?

Mat 55:29

Well, that's such an interesting question. So we had no plans to keep everything in-house. And you mentioned Zambia. So I was in Zambia 15 years ago, and I was meeting with government there. 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. I'd never been to Africa before. What the hell do I know? I was completely naive. And so that's the way I approached everything. 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. 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. So many of these African countries were, you know, testing at the lowest levels in the world, and it's kind of embarrassing. 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. I was like, okay, well, great. Well, there's a clear goal. 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. I went and spoke to a middle school head of school. And I said, Well, if we could give you anything, because we're not raising money, we were funding everything we did. We get tuition from university students, and then that funds our foundation. We don't do fundraisers and get donations and stuff. So um I said, if we could give you anything you wanted, what do you need? And I asked people this question sometimes, well, what do you guess that they would say? And people like, oh, pens, paper, computers, I don't know, textbooks. And so this is what I'm expecting. I'm like, what do you need? Tell us what you need, and we'll see what we can do. And this head of school says, we need better primary school kids. And I said, What? He said, the number three one thing we need is better primary school kids. He said, We get grade six kids coming to our school that can't basically write write their name on the board. And it's like, well, how are they getting into seventh grade? 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. So we can't leave the fourth grade kids there. 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. And they said, it's like too late. What are we meant to do with like seventh grade kids that can't write first grade English? And then I went back to the government representatives we were dealing with. I said, we're not going to work on year 11 and 12. I said, if you want to work with us, we're going to start working in primary schools. 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. It's fine. We're not evangelists, we don't have to work here, we don't care. Um, you want our help, you think we can support, we'll do it. So we said, no, we're working in primary schools. 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. Typically, you would have one textbook for a class, it'd be like 40, 45 kids in a class, big classrooms. 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. So I said, okay, we'll buy books for the schools, we'll buy libraries. I said, Where's your bookstores? And they're like, What do you mean we don't have any bookstores? I'm like, no, I'm like, we're in a city, like, where are the bookstores? We could go and buy books. And they're like, I'm having this weird conversation. They're telling me there's no bookstores. I'm like, you must have bookstores in a city. Like, where are your bookstores? Like, oh, we'll drive you down and show you our bookstores. 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. I was like, what is going on here? It's bizarre. Um, so I thought, okay, easy. Like, I'm a genius, right? Easy. We just go buy books. Like, oh, well, that was a dumb idea. That's not gonna work. Um, I'm like, okay, I'm still a genius. I've got the next great idea. I know a lot of people in Canada, Scotland, England, Australia that would love to support this. I'll just get them to donate books that they're not using. Every year level it finishes. What are they gonna do with their books? Throw them in the trash. We'll get the books and we'll ship them to Africa. 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. 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. Like, amazing, we're gonna ship all of this stuff to the schools. Thanks so much, that's great. Love that you're you know helping our kind of mission around school education. Uh, because food and hygiene is just as important as the teaching. Um, anyway, it took us like over a year to get these products into schools. The shipping was a nightmare, the customs was a nightmare. We spent months arguing with the government, they wanted to charge us import duties. We're like, are you serious? 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. So then I remembered, oh my God, it'll be an absolute nightmare trying to get books. So I was in Zambia and I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna go to the national radio station. I literally went to the radio station, I said, I want you to put ads on the radio. I said, we want to hire a publishing manager. 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. And now these kids are published authors. We print the books, we publish them, we distribute them. 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. I don't think there's an ice hockey rink in the whole of the country of Rwanda. Someone might pull me up and say that's wrong. Actually, we do, but I don't know. I've never seen one in Rwanda. Um, it's like it's just so disconnected, or princesses, you know, fairyland stuff from, you know, English folklore. So now you've got the oral storytelling traditions of Africa. 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. And that's just one program. 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. 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. And we only work with the public system, by the way. 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. So why would you go build a school in Africa? There's like 10,000 schools in Tanzania, none of them have enough learning resources. Why do they need another school? They don't need another school, they need better equipment for the whole 10,000 school system that's already there. So, you know, don't worry about the branding, focus more on how to improve the system.

Don 1:03:08

Matt, I've got to say, you've got to either be crazy or your brand's got to be wired differently. You you trying to build a university, one of the toughest things to do. And, you know, building a now uh well, you built a not-for-profit in Africa. Everything that you're saying sounds like you just love the challenge.

Mat 1:03:26

Well, exactly. I think you just want to be like doing things that are exciting and and interesting. Otherwise, you know, you live once. What's the point? And uh fair enough. 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.

Charity, Branding, And Safety Nets

Don 1:03:44

Politics, mate. Nah, let's not go there. But it's uh I was gonna say you did you talked about branding before, and um you called it philanthrocapitalism. Um, and you know, how how do you keep philanthropy from becoming the brand or philanthropy from becoming branding?

Mat 1:04:01

Yeah, well, that's a good question. 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. So it's not something that we generally promote, it's not something we often talk about. We don't really publicize it. We don't do a lot of press around it. Um so it's not so much a brand uh initiative for us, it's more of a purpose, mission-driven.

Don 1:04:24

I was asking more of a general question, man. I think there's a big for me, it's very close to home, right? 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? 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. And this has been a huge bugbear for me. So they've become brands rather than than the Some of that philanthropy too, Don.

Magnus 1:04:58

I think I've seen a lot of ego around it. So various uh non-for-profits people are there's a bit of gloating going on in in relation to fundraising.

Don 1:05:10

Yeah. And that's what I wanted to ask Matt. 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. 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. Um, and it seems like everything sort of yeah. So that's why I wanted to ask, how do you separate that branding exercise from the philanthropy itself?

Mat 1:05:37

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. 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. Um and any charity is good. Anything that any of us do is good. If you're helping someone that needs food. Great. But what May Monitors talks about is that the lowest form of charity is when you give someone charity in order to get recognition. It's still good. It's not a bad thing. That's the lowest form of charity, right? 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. Okay. So you're doing that for your own ego, or are you doing that because you really believe in the course? Either way, it's still helping the school, but you know, it's not necessarily the best form of charity. Um, higher than that is a form of charity where you're doing it where it's not even recognized. Like the person you're giving charity to doesn't even know that you're giving them charity. 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. And the highest form of charity, which is what we believe in, is to remove the need for charity. The best charity is to not need charity. And what does that mean? It means teach people a skill to support themselves, and you don't need charity at all. So that's a big question around what the purpose of charity should be, and every organization is different. But some organizations don't have a choice. Very big brands that you're talking about, Don, they don't have a separate source of income. They're not a business. Like the Pratt Foundation is a great example of philanthropic capitalists, right? 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. 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. Well, how do you get money from the public if no one knows you? 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. So they still could be doing really worthwhile things. 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. And then people get upset about that because they think, why would I donate the money? But then people who work in charities have to get paid as well, right? So it's like, well, you can't expect everyone to work for free. Like, how are they paying their mortgage? So there are some complex questions around the best modeling of charity, and there's all sorts of variations and extremes within that.

Magnus 1:08:39

What's your view on that, Fahim?

Fahim 1:08:42

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. That used to be the line, okay? We should exist to not exist. That should be our purpose, right? Um and unfortunately, obviously, the world, there are lots of people in very uh difficult situations and you need the help. Um, I don't know if the numbers are as high as you think. I think it's my experience, uh, we can look them up on the ACNC. I think uh I think overheads are like around 25% at the top end. Uh so 75% does still go there. 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. I think we're all trying to make the world a kind of better place. I think ultimately that's what it is. Now, obviously, there's a few people who come into this world for ego or just to make money. There's some fraudsters as well. If we put them aside, I think they're the minority. 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? Yeah, um, so and that's one of the best things I love about South Africa. 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. Like I come from Bangladesh and South Africa. I've seen countries where there is no safety net, right? And so I'll it's I love it when people argue with tax with me. I'm like, Look, I get it. There's probably some inefficiencies in how the government's spending the tax dollars I'm giving me. But en masse, that's probably the largest way to distribute really good services, right? Um, I mean, you just did the sleep out, right? 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. But like we're gonna have a bigger impact. Don't worry about it. I had this conversation with uh Magnus, I think, yesterday before he went for his sleep out.

Don 1:10:53

So it is true.

Fahim 1:10:54

But it's great to raise awareness though. And to Matt's point, anything's good, yeah. We could always just do better.

Magnus 1:11:00

It's the doing part because it it it did. I did sleep, I did sleep rough last night and and I'm struggling a little bit today as a consequence. There's a lot of a few aches that have arisen as a consequence of sleeping on a piece of cardboard. But it does really reiterate to people when you do see tents set up in parks. That's that's that's how they're living. And and that's sad for a first world country.

Don 1:11:25

Aaron Powell Awareness is another big p part of all of this, right? 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.

Fahim 1:11:42

It's probably the first time I've been in Australia 23 years. It's only recently I've started seeing these tents and stuff, right? Um the Bangladesh equivalent, where it's so much that nobody does anything about it, you have to actually block it out. 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. 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. 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. So they pretend like they don't even see the kids at the window. Okay, and that's kind of how they deal with it, and it's a coping mechanism. So I'm I'll never knock anyone who's doing anything charitable ever, even if it moves the dial one tiny little bit. 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. So the sleep art is a great example, not to jump on a higher. 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.

Magnus 1:13:05

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. So we are running out of time, Don. I'm giving you an opportunity, Don. What what some closing questions or I know you by now.

Don 1:13:24

This is a closing statement. I want to say a statement, not a question. It's not a question. It's something that you said about it's something that you said about tax, right? Coming from I think it's coming from a third world country. 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. The lifestyle pays for it, yeah. Yeah, I I just wanted to agree with you on that, and I don't have any any other questions.

Magnus 1:14:02

So any closing statements from you, Fain, before we get into the quick fire questions, Matt, get ready, mate.

Fahim 1:14:08

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. I think we're all sitting around this table realizing that we've had pretty good lives and we're living really well. It's just how we make sure everyone else also has one too, and giving people the chance to do so. So as long as we stay on that purpose, I think that we're hope for humanity, really.

Quick Fire And How To Connect

Magnus 1:14:33

Well said. All right, Matt, we'll jump into these quick fire questions, mate. You know what uh they're all about short little one-sentence max answers. Are you ready?

Mat 1:14:42

I'm ready. Ready.

Magnus 1:14:44

Let's do it. One thing AI will never replace. Uh human feelings. The most overrated word in education.

Mat 1:14:54

Um Innovation?

Magnus 1:14:57

The most underrated skill of the next decade.

Mat 1:15:01

Human connectivity and empathy.

Magnus 1:15:05

Australia or America? Where does the next great university get built?

Mat 1:15:11

Um I would have to say in America because of the variation and and uh experimentation that you have here.

Magnus 1:15:20

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. A degree or a plane ticket?

Mat 1:15:27

A degree or a plane ticket. Yeah, exactly. 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.

Don 1:15:39

Nice.

Magnus 1:15:40

Well said. The hardest lesson AA has taught you.

Mat 1:15:44

The hardest lesson, AA? LA. Los Angeles. Oh, LA, I think you're Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, I'll be starting a new book. Do I do I need to be in AA? I don't know. Okay. Um, the hardest lesson that LA has taught. Is that the question? Yes. LA is a very difficult place, um, has a lot of challenges. 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. And LA is a country of extremes. 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. And those extremities are pretty hard. And um I could go on, but you said to keep it to a sentence, I'll leave it at that.

Magnus 1:16:38

A leader, living or dead, you'd put in your faculty tomorrow.

Mat 1:16:43

Benjamin Franklin.

Magnus 1:16:45

Wow. One thing every five-year-old should be learning right now.

Mat 1:16:50

How to communicate with keeping eye contact.

Magnus 1:16:54

Single decision that's built your career more than any other.

Mat 1:16:58

Believe in yourself and you're your own best security. Don't think a big brand, a big company, something else is going to give you security. You're your own security.

Magnus 1:17:10

Well said. Last question, mate. Finish this sentence.

Mat 1:17:14

A degree should be something that you are genuinely learning from.

Magnus 1:17:20

Oh, fantastic, mate. Thank you very much again for your time and your insights, Matt. I've been managed to not get too uh distracted by that pink thing floating around behind you, mate. It's been a it's been an absolute privilege and a pleasure, mate. Thank you.

Don 1:17:35

It has, Matt. And Matt, can I um ask if people want to find you, um, what's the best way for them to reach you?

Mat 1:17:41

So, a couple of ways. Good question. So, LinkedIn, um, I'm on LinkedIn, that's always a good way to try to connect. Um, and from our websites, um Kennedy U, just the letter U, Kennedy U.education, is a good way to find us. 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. Uh, so there's various ways um to touch with us.

Don 1:18:08

We'll put all those um in the show notes. Nice. Thanks, Matt. Cheers, mate. Thank you.

Mat 1:18:14

Thank you so much. Thanks, guys. See you later.

Magnus 1:18:18

Hope you enjoyed this exciting episode of the Mastering Podcast. If you got value from today's conversation, hit that subscribe button now and share this episode with a friend. Until next time.