Podcast by Dr. Bjorn Mercer, DMA, Department Chair, Communication and World Languages and
Nuno Fernandes, President, American Public University System
Education will change more in the next 15 years than it has for the last millennium, predicts Nuno Fernandes, President of American Public University System. Hear how technology and innovation – specifically artificial intelligence – could lead to advancements in education not seen since the advent of the printing press.
Together with Dr. Bjorn Mercer, Mr. Fernandes contemplates how AI might transform students’ experiences in the classroom. From unlocking new opportunities for highly customized learning and instruction to potential tuition savings, AI could potentially redefine higher education. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly prevalent, it is now more important than ever for students – and universities – to embrace change, plus prepare for what’s next.
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Bjorn Mercer: Hello, my name is Dr. Bjorn Mercer, and today we’re talking to Nuno Fernandes, President of American Public University System, about technology and the future of higher education. Welcome, Nuno.
Nuno Fernandes: Thank you very much for having me.
Bjorn Mercer: I’m excited. I’ve heard your speeches. They are absolutely excellent in your vision about the future.
And so, let’s jump into the first question. In many ways, the traditional century-old approach of colleges has been to maintain the status quo and continue delivering education the same way it has been for literally hundreds of years. But it’s your view that change will accelerate in the next several years. Why do you think this is occurring and what do you think that change will look like?
Nuno Fernandes: Yeah, thank you. Education is probably one of the few industries, for lack of a better word, that has not been disrupted by technology over time.
If you really think about it, it’s interesting because the model that we have today, it’s very similar to the model that we had a thousand years ago. And this is not hyperbole; I truly mean it.
If you go back in time to the first university, let’s say it was Bologna in Italy, it’s debatable, some say it was in Morocco, it doesn’t matter, but let’s say a thousand years ago, the first university in the world, the concept was that there was a professor, usually a man, and that he would go into some sort of classroom and then there would be students.
And those students will listen to the professor, and they would take notes, and they would learn and memorize whatever he was saying. And then eventually they would do an exam, and then they would move along the academic progression.
And then that concept remained the same. I think the first revolution in education occurred when the printing press which allowed to do books at scale. And that was really the first revolution because now you can read the book, and you can have someone else reading the book and explaining the book to you. So, in many ways, ironically, the book was the first tool for distance learning, if you really think about it.
And that was the first significant change in education where now you can have a professor, still in the same format, you know, there’s students, there’s a professor, but now the professor can talk about the book and the content that someone else wrote.
And then over time, of course, the buildings became more modern and the installations were different. And then you had calculators and computers and things like that. And then, you know, about 30 years ago, and I’m moving here really fast-forward, but, you know, 30 years ago, online education started, which now you can deliver education through a computer. You don’t really need the physical presence anymore.
And that was another important revolution in that sense, because now you don’t need to be in a physical space with a professor to deliver education. You can be anywhere around the world and still attend those classes. But the concept is still the same. It’s a professor talking, the students learning or reading, interpreting what the professor is saying, the content that is being given by this professor, a lot of times memorizing it, doing exams and try to move forward all the way to completion.
So, if you take these two moments in time that were really the two important, I think, revolutions in education, or the book and online education, nothing really significant happened.
And even those two revolutions did not change the delivery model, they might have changed the vehicle, right, you have the book, you have the computer, but the delivery model is the same.
And I think that now we are already on the verge of something special that will happen because now all these new technologies, specifically AI, will allow to transform the experience inside the classroom in ways that were not possible before.
And that’s why I believe, and I always say this, that, education will change more in the next 15 years than it did in the prior 1,000 years, because now it’s possible, and before, it was not possible.
Now, this does not mean that the role of the faculty will be less relevant. If anything, I would argue that it’s going be more relevant. Because when you look at numbers, and I’m a numbers guy, and I like to see data, and I like to interpret data and make decisions based on facts and not on anecdotes. When you look at the data, the data tells you that a lot of the time that faculty spends with the students is not really teaching them or even sharing academic knowledge or sharing creative thinking exercises. There’s a lot of admin stuff that is going on, right?
“And, you know, I cannot see my exam, or I cannot log in, I cannot do this,” all those kind of things that will eventually go away and allow the faculty to really dedicate themselves to do what they’re supposed to do, which is to educate and to transmit knowledge to the students. And I think that technology will allow that transmission in a much more efficient, in a much more productive, and in a much more exciting manner than what it’s done today. It will create more engaging experiences. It will give more power to the faculty. It will give more power to the student. And I think it will make education a lot more attractive than what currently is.
Bjorn Mercer: That’s an absolutely wonderful response. And I’m glad that you brought us through the history of education and how information and knowledge is disseminated because I think a lot of people they accept their reality and what they’ve taken culturally is just like, “Oh, this is how it’s always been.”
But with technology today, it’s changing so much. And I really like how you brought up artificial intelligence and all the different changing technologies because, really one of the more, more exciting things that I think about is how it’ll be individualized.
Like if you’re going to go into cybersecurity, you will get all the best information about cybersecurity plus all the cultural connections you need to deal with other people. If you’re going into philosophy, you’ll be given all the great philosophy information, plus all those things that you need to practically talk to people about philosophy.
And I think this is the absolute perfect transition to the next question. The increasing popularity of artificial intelligence is dominating headlines today, whether it’s news about Microsoft Copilot, other commercially available tools, or the soaring stock in NVIDIA. You can’t avoid hearing about the vast promise of AI. What does this mean for students and faculty in higher education?
Nuno Fernandes: I think you touched on the answer before asking the question, and what I mean by that, Bjorn, is that we’re currently living… some people say we’re living in the fourth revolution. I believe we’re living in the fifth revolution already.
The first revolution was, say, the Industrial Revolution, 1780, particularly in the UK, where they had machines powered by water, by steam, to increase production.
Then the second revolution happened around 1870. You know, it’s debatable with electricity, right, you know, to use electricity to power massive assembly lines and become even more productive.
Then the third revolution came with automation in the ’70s with electronics, the first computers made industries even more productive. And a great example of this is if you look at the number of people in the United States for example working in agriculture and you go back, you know, 150 years, the number was 15x, 20x, 25x, what it is today. However, today the output of agriculture in the United States is much bigger than what it was before with 25x more people working in the industry. So that was the third revolution.
Then the fourth revolution from 2010, with online, the introduction of connected devices, data analysis, the first steps with AI, and the creation of these large companies that were essentially founded because the internet was available, Amazon and Facebook and Instagram and Netflix and Spotify, and all these big companies that didn’t exist before and that they were founded during the expansion of online.
And now the fifth revolution I think we can call it the digital revolution, which is related to the customization and personalization of whatever services you are consuming.
And this is very visible with Amazon or Netflix, for example, to use the same examples, right? So when you go to your Netflix, you’re going to get a series of recommendations of movies and things that they believe that you’d like to see, that most likely are going to be different than mine and most likely are going to be different to any other person because it’s customized for you.
This is valid in most of the services today that are delivered in a digital format. However, education is one of the few services where one size fits all. And that does not make much sense because everyone is different, right?
So, if I’m better at math and you’re better at biology, then why should we all learn the same? Every person is different, the way we learn, the personality, the things we like, best experiences, best knowledge, but when we get to college, to university, we say, “No, this is the content, this is the curriculum, and everyone follows the same path.”
And I think that’s a very old-fashioned way of looking at things, and eventually technology will allow to customize and personalize each individual academic path to fit the profile of each student and to make sure that we maximize the learning path during the academic journey, and that we also maximize the output, which is to make sure that more students graduate because they have exciting experiences, they have experiences that they enjoy, they feel that they are engaged and they will persist better and they will graduate better.
When someone comes to the university and this, of course, varies a bit depending on your age and where you are, but most likely if you come to the university you are looking for one of two things.
The first one is you’re looking to get a job and the second one is that you’re looking to get a better job if you already have a job. And then, of course, you’re looking to provide for you, for your family.
So, a good university is not necessarily one university that attracts a lot of students. A good university is a university that graduates a lot of students because the purpose of starting an academic career is to finish that academic career, right?
And I think that technology will allow to improve graduation rates because it will allow to make the academic program better. It will also allow to provide a lot of supporting services that will make the experience better and that will make the student more committed to the university.
For example, last year, we’ve launched mental health service to all our students free of charge and it’s available 24/7 in 25 languages. Now, think about we have 90,000 students, how many people would we have to hire if you wanted to provide 24/7 mental health support in 25 languages? I mean I don’t know, maybe 500 people, 600 people. But now you can do it with technology and you can offer that free of charge. So, technology allows to do more for less and it will continue to be like that, to do more and more for less and less.
And I always give the example, in the past, not long ago, 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, you would go on a Friday night to Blockbuster, you know, to get a DVD, right? And you’d pay $15, you’d get the popcorn, you’d have 24 hours to return the DVD, and then, if not, you’d pay a penalty. But you would get one DVD for $15.
And now you can pay $15 per month on Netflix and you can watch as many movies, as many series as you want. So it’s clearly a much better product. It’s clearly a much better service and it’s clearly for a much better price than what you had before.
So, in education I think it will be a similar effect where technology will allow to do more for less and hopefully that cost advantage will be transmitted to the students in the future.
I think one of the biggest problems in higher education in the United States is that the academic programs, the academic career became so expensive that some students are considering if it’s a good investment of their time and money to actually do it, right?
And to spend four years in a classroom and then graduate with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and you don’t even have a job and you already have all these debts behind you. So, it’s really a problem that is not only in the United States, but certainly magnified in the United States where I believe as educators, we need to try to provide better education, better services for less cost. And the only way to do that is with technology. There’s no other way to do it.
Bjorn Mercer: No, and I completely agree. It makes me think of a speech by NVIDIA’s CEO. I recently watched where he talked about domain competency, where somebody said, “Hey, what degree should I get?” And he said, “Well, there’s a lot of things you can do, but you’re really seeking to make competency. And what that is, is skilling up, getting experience, and then getting that absolute expertise in your field.”
And, that’s one of the things that I think of with APUS that we’re able to do, and all of higher education needs to go, and I’m glad you brought up the value of college, is that there’s such an incredible value with college and connecting people. But it’s one of the things that with technology and AI we have to adjust. And, again, it’s getting students what they need at the time that, so many institutions are scrambling for and that we are actively working to do.
Nuno Fernandes: The interesting thing of what you mentioned is that if you look at the data again, if you look at the numbers, it is undeniable fact that at least until now, that if you have a higher education degree, the income that you will produce over your lifetime is almost double, sometimes double, than if you only have a high school diploma. So, the value is there.
The media sometimes likes to say, “Oh, there’s no value in higher education,” and, and that’s not true. The data does not show that. The data shows that there’s a lot of value in terms of income creation, to you, to your family. And that if you look at large companies, the large majority of people in positions of leadership, they have sometimes not one degree, sometimes two, sometimes even more degrees.
So, it is clear that there’s a lot of value in getting a higher education degree. I believe that the media sometimes, I understand why they do it, because they want clicks and they want attention, they try to use examples of things that are not examples to make a case. Look at Steve Jobs and look at Mark Zuckerberg and look at Bill Gates and we’re talking about some of the most successful people, not in the world, in the history of humanity.
Surely, there are many people that are quite successful without higher education degree. But the data shows that your chances of being successful increase significantly when you have a higher education degree. So, we should not use the exception to justify the rule because that’s not true. It’s just simply not true.
Bjorn Mercer: I completely agree. I can only think of my own example. My route for my own life and career was higher education. Now, if you have that option and you can go into the family business, excellent, but I’ll just say, me and probably like a lot of people like me, higher education was the ticket and without that ticket, again, I don’t know what might have happened.
Nuno Fernandes: And it still is, it still is. Statistically speaking, it still is the ticket that you have much better chances of having success with the higher education degree than not.
But to the point that you were making before, I think we’re getting to a stage where education is becoming so expensive that more and more people are questioning the value of spending and investing all that money up front.
I’ve been the president of APUS now for almost two years, so what I’m about to say, I’m not taking credit for it because it’s something that was here before I came, so I don’t want to sound that I’m taking credit for it, but I do want to give credit to APUS for this because if you look over the last two decades, over the last 20 years, the average price of tuition in the United States, the higher education tuition increased something like 300%. And the average tuition price for APUS over the same period of time increased 15%. So, 20 times less, right?
It remained loyal to the mission of providing affordable and accessible high-quality education. And I applaud it, I applaud APUS for that, and hopefully within my tenure as president, we will continue to do that because that’s who we are. We offer a high-quality education for an affordable price and more and more I think that’s necessary.
We had commencement in Washington D.C., National Harbor, just about six weeks ago and we had 16,000 people there.
And when you talk to these students, the large majority of them, they’re either active-duty military students or they are married or they are single moms or they have a family. And when you talk to them, you quickly realize that if it was not for universities like APUS, most likely they will not have the chance of getting a higher education degree because it would just be impossible for them to say, “I’m going to take four years off and now go back to school.”
So, there’s also a social component there that is very important and sometimes minimized, I believe, which is not only we offer education in a very affordable format, at least affordable for the United States, but also we offer it in a way that allows them to progress and to keep doing whatever they’re doing with their jobs, in the active duty, or with their companies or with their families and still get access to a higher education degree. And I think that’s fantastic.
Bjorn Mercer: You know, when I go to graduation for APUS, it revitalizes me to see people and their families and their kids and going through it, it’s so raw because they’re working. They’re working to change their lives.
Nuno Fernandes: Yeah.
Bjorn Mercer: Were there any specific graduate stories that you’d like to highlight?
Nuno Fernandes: Yes, I do speak regularly with students. They contact me on LinkedIn. And you’re absolutely right. When you go to commencement, everything kind of makes sense. I have the privilege of not only being up there, but shaking hands with every student that walks across the stage. It’s a tremendous privilege because my parents are first generation as well.
So, my grandparents, they lived in a small village and they didn’t know how to read or write. So think about it, it only takes one generation to really transform the life of a family. My grandparents went to university. My father became a lawyer, my mother became a teacher, coincidentally, and now here I am being the president of a university in the United States. It only takes a generation to really transform the trajectory of a family. So, I know we have a lot of first-generation students and I applaud them for taking that initiative because I hope that it’s going to be transformational for them, you know, for their kids, for their spouses, as it was for my family.
When you are up there and you see some of them walking on stage with their kids, you know, all the family celebrating, the friends. I posted something recently that there was a student he walked on stage with this kid, probably four or five years old, and I said something like that our students are warriors in many ways because it’s very difficult. People think that studying online is easy, it’s actually very hard, much harder than studying in a traditional format.
And then when you add to that the fact that you are active duty in many cases, you’re being deployed, you’re doing military exercises, or you’re a working adult, you have a family, you have kids, the kind of drive that it takes for you to go through it and complete it, it’s truly memorable. And they are warriors, you know, in many cases.
Students have told me that APUS has changed their life in many ways. I met with students that told me that they’ve created companies. I met students that came back for the second and third degree. I met students that told me how grateful they are to our faculty because they’ve been extraordinary during the process.
So, it’s hard for me to just highlight one or two. I mean, I loved the students that spoke at commencement this year. I thought their speeches were brilliant. I remain in contact with them on LinkedIn. And truly, that’s what we do, you know, and we can’t ever lose perspective of what we do. And the only thing worth doing is to provide a great education to our students and to work really hard for them to graduate and to have a chance to have a better life.
And sometimes, this happens in every enterprise, sometimes you lose perspective of things. You have meetings, and then you have PowerPoints, and then you have Excels, and, and then you have to go talk to this person and that person. And, sometimes, it’s easy to lose perspective of what we do. But I work really hard mentally to never lose that perspective of what we’re trying to do, which is to serve our students in memorable ways and to keep serving them better and better. It sounds like a cliche, but I truly mean it, because that’s the only thing we’re doing.
The students, they are trusting us with their time, with their money, with their education. It’s a big deal. It’s a big deal, and we have to be very respectful and very responsible about it.
So, again, it’s hard for me to mention just one case because there are so many emotional and beautiful cases that I’ve talked to and really, like you said, when you are there with the students and with their families and you take photos and they tell you about their journey, it just makes everything come together and then you kind of recharge for another year so you will get the energy to do it again.
Bjorn Mercer: Yeah, as you’re talking, it made me think the need, as you said, just to focus on the mission and to focus on the students. It’s so critically important. And whenever I teach, I always try to think, “Who is the student who is sitting across from me?” Now, online, they’re not literally sitting across from me, but I want to make sure that that interaction is impactful every single time, because there’s nothing worse than if students perceive that they’re just a number to you and that’s the absolute last thing we ever want to do because every single student is important. Them changing their lives is so important.
Everything you’ve talked about with the graduation and the technology is helping facilitate a better experience and a better learning experience for everyone. And even what you’re talking about of your youth and your family of connecting people from different countries. And it makes me think of like 100 years ago, every country was, like, a self-encased country.
Nuno Fernandes: Yes.
Bjorn Mercer: They were only obsessed with their own country. Today, we can live anywhere. And learning those skills of cross-cultural communication and understanding people is so much more important today than ever, if we want to live in a world, honestly, where we get along. And I think pretty much everybody wants that to happen.
Nuno Fernandes: We talk a lot about diversity in the United States, and I think it’s really important. But there’s another type of diversity which is the global diversity, right? How much are we learning from other cultures? How much can other cultures learn from us?
I personally think that the United States is the best country in the world and there’s a lot to be learned from the United States, but I was also born in another country and I think there’s good things to learn from that country, and I’ve had the pleasure and the honor of, I’ve lived in several countries around the world and during my career in Germany, in the UK, in South America, in Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Mexico.
And every time you travel and every time you visit another country, especially when you live there, you learn something new. And, you learn things that you haven’t thought about or sometimes you learn to appreciate more the things that you have that you didn’t appreciate before.
So, there’s another type of diversity that I think it’s very powerful, which is this global diversity that hopefully, through education, we can promote that a little bit in APUS. And we already have students in 80 countries around the world, if you believe it or not.
But, of course, it’s a small number compared to the entire population. We hope to increase that because I think there’s a lot of value even for the students to share the same classroom with people from other cultures, from other countries, and to share different perspectives.
And really, a culture is all about perspective, it’s all about what you learned as a kid and how you cement your ideas as a teenager and then the things that you are surrounded in society as an adult. All of them are different and all of them have strengths and weaknesses.
And I think that a university is also a place to share that knowledge and to develop that kind of global thinking, critical thinking, and also to learn to respect others and to understand that whatever you think, you might strongly think something and rightfully so, but there’s always another perspective.
And just because someone thinks in a different way than you do, it doesn’t mean that this person is wrong, it just means that you don’t agree with it. So, I’m all for it, and I hope that APUS can expand significantly more globally, because I think for our students it would be a very valuable experience.
Bjorn Mercer: I always like to say if you have a disagreement, you should have a disagreement with reasonable people. Because if you’re reasonable and you listen to somebody, you can totally disagree. But you can still come together, and again, it’s not like you’re going to solve the world’s problem, but you’re going to understand each other. And that’s really the most important thing.
Nuno Fernandes: It doesn’t mean that if someone else likes something different that that person is wrong. And I think that as a community it’s very important that we enforce that message that we have to be united, but we don’t have to all think the same things, but we have to be united. And I think that’s something that hopefully as a university we can do it, not intentionally, but through promoting the transmission and the sharing of knowledge and different perspectives from people around the world.
Bjorn Mercer: Exactly. And that actually transitioned quite nicely to the last question, is you had a powerful message for graduates within your keynote speech at commencement. With that in mind, what would you like to tell our listeners, specifically ones who might be current students or future students?
Nuno Fernandes: My message was about change, and how change is the only constant in life. And everything changes, sometimes it changes very abruptly and very rapidly, sometimes it changes very slowly, but the whole history of the universe, the whole history of society, the whole history of humanity is about change.
And, funny enough, humans don’t like change. By definition, you know, don’t like change because when you get used to something, you like that, you don’t want it to change, so it’s normal.
But change is really the only constant in life. And my message was for our students, our graduates in this particular case, to be open to change and to be open to the opportunities that will come now probably more rapidly than ever with the technology advancements.
To not fight them, but to be open to them and to look at them as an opportunity to develop themselves, their career, and the outcomes of what their careers will produce for them and for their families. But this is nothing new, to be honest, Bjorn. You don’t have to go back a lot of time, you know, go back 150 years and look at, for example, the list of the biggest companies in the United States 150 years ago, and you probably would not recognize any name there.
But if you go back 70 years, the biggest companies in the world, you know, probably you would recognize a few names, but not all of them. And if you ask what are the 50 biggest companies in the world in 50 years, I would be willing to bet that they are not the same ones that we have today.
But if you ask most people, I think they’ll say, “Oh, Google is never going to stop being Google, and META,” and, and probably not. And good for them. They do a fantastic job, and they’re incredible companies. I’m not saying they’re not. What I’m saying is that most likely something else will come along. They will not adapt to change, and then slowly someone will replace them, as it has happened in the history of humanity throughout history.
So, another example is when you look at the most important jobs 100 years ago, the most important jobs 50 years ago, and by most important, I mean jobs that employ the most people, and they were completely different.
So people say, “Oh, you know, AI is going to transform our jobs and we’re all going to be unemployed,” and that’s just not going to happen. What’s going to happen is that certainly a lot of jobs that are repetitive will probably go away, but a lot of other jobs that don’t exist today will be created. And a lot of jobs will be leveraged and improved by technology.
I mean, I think faculty is one of them. Being a doctor is another. Being a lawyer is another. You’re going to be able to perform much better, much faster as a doctor, having access to all this amount of intelligence than what you do today, or as a lawyer, or as a faculty.
So, I think at least within our lifetime, you know, I think it’s going to be used for good, and it’s going to be used to give us tools to perform better in our jobs. And if the regulators do a good job regulating it, I think it will really transform the world to become more wealthy, for people to live longer, for people to maybe have more free time, and for people to work less hours, and things like that.
But, of course, we don’t know what’s going to happen and there’s always risks. But the message was to embrace change, not to fight change, to embrace change and to think how you can navigate through that change to your benefit and to be a better professional and to be more successful. So, I think that was, in summary, the message that I’ve delivered to, to the students.
Bjorn Mercer: Absolutely wonderful comments, Nuno. You know, it makes me think, just like you said, 50 years ago, so like in the ’70s, what are the major companies, even just what cars look like in the ’70s.
My first car was built in the ’70s. And then I think I can get into a car that’s going to drive me somewhere without me having to do anything.
And that’s just such an amazing change. And then just how those cars will create new jobs. Maybe I won’t have to drive to California myself and I could read a book while I drive to California. Sounds amazing, I want that to happen right now.
Nuno Fernandes: If you go back 10 years and you say, “Okay, I’m going to buy a car online.” So, you buy the car online, then the car gets delivered to your house. Then you get inside the car, and the car drives itself to wherever you want to go.
And if you would tell this to someone 10 years ago, people would say, “Well, you’re crazy. I mean, this is impossible.” But it’s happening, right?
So, a lot of the things that we do today that would look like science fiction just 10 years ago. So that’s why I’m saying, you know, don’t fight change and when something looks maybe a bit out there and maybe a bit crazy for current times, maybe in a few months, or in a few years it’s going to be the new normal.
So just try to understand, try to have critical thinking about why things are happening. Try to understand what that means for you, for your job, for your career. And if you see a benefit, just incorporate it and try to take as much advantage as you can from it.
Bjorn Mercer: Excellent. Absolutely wonderful time talking about the future, talking about change. If there’s one constant, it is change. And so, thank you, Nuno, for a great conversation.
Nuno Fernandes: Well, thank you very much for having me today. It’s been a pleasure.
Bjorn Mercer: My name is Dr. Bjorn Mercer and have a great day.
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