Episode #110: Dr. John Comerford

🎙️ Blowing Up the Cost of College: A Conversation w/ Dr. John Comerford 

What if everything you thought you knew about the cost of college was wrong? In this week’s episode of the Significant Coaching Podcast, Matt Rogers sits down with Dr. John Comerford, President of Otterbein University, for a powerful two-part conversation that challenges assumptions about higher education and affordability.

Dr. Comerford is on a mission to make college accessible to everyday families—helping students graduate without a mountain of debt. In Part 1, he speaks candidly about tuition, value, and why families shouldn’t dismiss private schools before exploring what they truly offer. His honesty and conviction shine through as he addresses the tough questions head-on.

If you’re a parent, educator, or coach, this episode will open your eyes to options you may not have considered—and may just reshape how you think about sending your son or daughter to college.

🔗 For more resources, visit CoachMattRogers.com
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Transcript

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You see the NCAA with the vote of its institutions doing things like allowing for immediate transfer and eligibility. We know Matt. That when a student transfers from school to school, their chances of graduating with a bachelor's degree are cut in half. Yeah. And yet the NCAA division three, my peers voted that in 95% to 5%, and I was in the 5% voting. No, that's not a division three thing to do. We got that wrong. We put our students last. Welcome back to the Significant Coaching Podcast. I'm your host Matt Rogers. We have a very special two part episode this week. I open the show with a clip that captures exactly why I see this week's guest. As a true higher education superhero because of his conviction to helping families make college affordable and ensuring students have the opportunity to graduate without being buried under a mountain of debt. Today's guest is Dr. John Erford, president of Otterbine University in Westerville, Ohio. I was blessed to both attend college and then spend nearly 20 years working at the NCAA Division three and Division two Levels and the NAI level. That experience fuels my mission to make sure every parent and student understands just how many outstanding choices exist beyond their local state schools. As you'll hear, I asked President Comerford some difficult big picture questions and he never backed down. He never gave an easy out answer. He spoke from the heart, and I believe that's the same way he lives his life and leads his community. If you're a parent or a high school educator, you're in for a treat. Dr. Erford is about to challenge and blow up some of the things you may assume you know about higher education and tuition costs. Things that too often discourage everyday families from even considering private colleges. I learned a ton from this conversation, and I know you will too. It's not only educational, but it was a lot of fun. For more information about me, along with my coaching and recruiting books, classes, and resources, and speaking opportunities. Please visit coach matt rogers.com and if you enjoy this conversation, please hit that subscribe button. I can't tell you enough. It's free. It costs you nothing, but it does help me keep bringing you transformational conversations with people who share the truths about college, sports, and education. Without further ado, here's part one of my conversation with Dr. John Erford. Dr. Comfor, so excited to have you on the podcast. Thanks for being on the show today. Well, thanks for having me. I'm honored to be invited, especially by way of Rich Dunsworth and Jim Troja. Good people, really good people, and they, they've spoken highly of you. I want to jump in, if you don't mind. I want to kind of quote you a little bit from what I've, I've read you said that you've said that Otter BeIN's leadership is meant to be different, special and worthy of emulation. I love that. I think every college and university should be striving for emulation from their peers. What does that look like in practice when you're leading a campus community? So the primary thing I'm talking about when I say something like that is the rot in the heart of American higher education is elitism. We all want 30 a CT kids from suburban high schools and to be in the top whatever, top 10 ranking, whatever stupid magazine comes along. This lay leads us to do things that are bad for students, bad for institutions, and bad for society. And so if you looked me up, Matt, you saw I was president of Blackburn College in Illinois last a work college unabashedly serving a majority Pell eligible student population, given kids a chance that wouldn't have a chance anywhere else. And Otterbein is a heart of the curve. We serve rich kids, we serve poor kids, we serve local kids, we serve international kids, and I shouldn't call them kids, but we have to as charities. Open the door wider to higher ed and not measure ourselves by how many doors we close, right? How do we do that when we have to keep the doors open and, and, and feed the kids and pay the water bill? How do we do that the right way? So those, those families that don't have 25,000 a year saved, how do we give them that opportunity to go to an otterbine and not, not just they have to settle for the local community college? Yeah, so this is actually, it's not just a values thing. It's not just a, like it's the right thing to do thing. It is for a place like Otterbine, a business imperative. It works in our business model. And here's the secret sauce, and every president in the country should totally copy this. If you take the Pell Grant. If you take, at least in Ohio here, the Ohio College Opportunity Grant, but every state has some need-based grant that matches with the Pell, right? Sure. If you get some SGOG dollars and things like that in there, I'm getting for a Pell eligible zero a FC student,$14,000 a year in revenue. My typical net revenue per student is like 15 or 16. It's not meaningfully different. Right, and so I can put a deserving low income student into a seat that, given the demographics would probably otherwise be empty, get real revenue for it and do the right thing. This isn't just a give it away for free'cause it's the right thing to do. It's been the key to the growth that we've had. All right, so that helps your lower class families, the families that are making under 60,000 a year, typically 50,000 a year. What do we do? What do we do for those middle class families that are busting their tail? Mom and dad are both working. They're making 120, 130,000 a year with two parents, and they're looking at a price tag of 20 grand a year and going, we just can't do it. We, you know, where, where do we find that extra$1,200 a month to send our kid to a good college? How do we help that family? Yeah, so the donut hole, and I don't have a magic thing there. It's, I I talk a lot about high income students. They're fine. Yeah. Pell eligible students. We found a way to make it work for Pell eligible students. It's the students between there. Yeah. That it does get difficult. There's no way around it. I, I would implore all of us to think about our pricing models. We have a high tuition, high discount model like most other schools have. Even now, public universities are having these, these high discount rates, and so the sticker price tends to scare these families away. If you looked at Otter buying sticker price, you're gonna find 34, 30$4,000 a year, and those families especially gonna go Uhuh. And so we have seen the market grow. For public institutions because their sticker price appears more affordable. Right? The reality is if we can at least get'em to look, then we're often as affordable, if not more affordable than the public. It's about doing a better job, Matt, of. Helping students find their match. And too often we don't do a good job of articulating the finances, articulating distinctiveness in the institution. Why is Otterbein different than Ohio State University? And there's a thousand reasons why Ohio State's Great. So are we, but we're different. Yeah. And helping them find that match. Well, I know how hard you're working at it and and I love that about you and I love that messaging.'cause I've talked to parents. I, you know, I've, I can't tell you how many presidents I've talked to about that model that you're, you're discussing is, we had to keep up with the Joneses. I always hear. You know, you know, everybody in our conference is moving to 50 to 70,000 a year. We had to move up there or otherwise we don't look like we're we, we have, we're the same value proposition. But parents don't know that. Parents don't know that you're increasing what you're giving with the raise in tuition prices. So how do we explain, how do we explain that? To my dad who was a barber for 60 years making, you know, five,$6 a head of hair back in the seventies and eighties when I was going to school. How do we explain to him when he sees a$60,000 price tag that they still should apply? They should still go through the financial aid process, not to think that it's not tenable. So what we found, and this is not perfect, is signaling it before we get FAFSA data back from the federal government. Too often we hope they apply. If they apply, well then we wait until the spring when we get ICER's data from the feds to be able to package financial aid. Right? Right. And so there's this long period in which you look super unaffordable and out of reach and all until suddenly the financial aid comes in late in the spring. And so for a Pell eligible student, we've marketed, we call it the Opportunity Scholarship, and we just tell'em, if you're Pell eligible, we've got you for tuition full, tuition covered, no loans. Simple, clear, you know, right away if you're eligible or not. And so, boom. And you can go into a lower income school district or go into a charitable partner and just say that, and they're, they're, they light up. And so it's clear you don't have to wait and, you know, figure out 17 things on a, on a FAFSA formula. For the middle class students, what we've done, we just had a really good incoming class this fall. We're really happy, and part of that was we have always packaged students twice. We package merit the moment they're admitted, right? Because we know GPA, we know a CT Smart Package. Mary, right away. Then we wait for ICER's data to package need. Well, a year ago, remember the FAFSA debacle where the ICER's data was delayed and the FAFSA was delayed forever and whatever, and that was a real crisis across the country. We took that moment to look at our data, and 95% of our students were getting repackaged with additional need aid after the iceers. And so why not just move that aid up front? Yeah, and give'em a better look with that first package. And we think that's one of the things we did that led to a bigger class coming in is just not having to wait for months for the FAFSA data. If you can communicate that clearly, upfront, give it a name like the Opportunity Scholarship, at least that's had some effect here. I love it. I'm gonna transition into athletics a little bit here with you. Yeah. Because I, I, because I think it plays such a big role in a small campus in terms of you paying the bills, you being able to market. You've been able to get the otter by name out there, not to mention filling beds and all those things that we want athletics to do for us. Yeah. The NCAA has made it very clear for many, many years. 50, 67 years, whatever it's been that we can't give athletic scholarships. We can't give anything based on your athleticism to a kid coming into your school. Right? Not in D three. Yeah, not in D three, but we have, we have institutions at the D three level that are finding a way to make it cheaper with the same price tag. Is there a way to do that with your coaches without breaking the rules? Is there a way to say, you know what, we're giving this much money to that kid with a 3 8 8 3 8 GPA 1200 SAT. We're gonna give this kid, these kids this amount of money and we're gonna make sure they get this is affordable for them. And we're also gonna do that same amount for our, we're gonna make sure our coaches know they're going after that type of kid. This is the number we want you to go after coaches. That doesn't mean you can't get other kids in the door, but if you want to get that bottom line to here, this is the kid you have to go over. Is that being preached from top down to your coaches so they, they understand they've gotta go after that certain individual, at least maybe 50%, 60% of their roster. Does that make sense to you? It does make sense. And I would say at least here, part of that is happening. So we, when we launched the opportunity scholarship for the Pell eligible students that we can now cover full tuition with no loans, that's a game changing financial aid package. Right. I think our coaches. And many sports had stopped recruiting, say in urban school districts because they thought, these kids can't afford Otterbein, so I'm not gonna go and waste their time and waste my time. So we went to those coaches, said, Hey, those students can now afford Otterbein. If they're PEGON eligible, we got'em full tuition and you're not gonna get, even your 30 A CT kid from the Suburban isn't getting full tuition. Right. And so. You ought to now go into those schools and build those pathways, and that's led to more diversity and those sorts of things like that. We have not though Matt gone to coaches and said, Hey, here's our sweet spot of revenue students, right? We So as long as they're admissible, as long as they can find a way to afford it, given whatever package they get based on their need and their merit, we've not directioned them within that. But we have seen a number of sports. Open up new recruiting territories based on the opportunity scholarship. I love that as a separate thing. Matt, can I just go ahead and be blunt and say, this feels like it's gonna be moot pretty soon because NIL is gonna blow up D three i I I, I mean, there are already schools in D three that are packaging NIL. And so how long are we gonna pretend that we're not packaging athletic scholarships? I don't like that. I'm not a fan of that. I think that's corrupting, and I don't wanna be anything like D one Where athletics is is, is wagging the dog. I, I, I don't want any part of that in D three, but given the legality of NIL, we're seeing, not at Otterbine yet, but at other schools, booster groups get together and go give, let's just call'em what they are. Athletic scholarships. They're just called nis. And so what does D three mean now? It's, it is so frustrating for me'cause I was a D three athlete. I was a D three head coach. I was the D three athletic director. I'm now a consultant for small colleges across the country and I loved my experience. You know, would I have liked to gone cheaper? Would I've loved is somebody, gimme some money. But I, I, at some point, don't we have to articulate and define NIL for what it is. If, if, if, if, if a company's not giving me money to use me in a commercial or put me on, you know, on their banner or you know, I'm wearing their shoes, what is NILI, I don't understand it. So that's my problem with it and it's, it, we have to be able to let these kids make a living, make more money if they can do it. But how many, how many shooting guards at the division three level are gonna get money for being, for having a Coke bottle in their hand? Well, not for having a Coke bottle in their hand, but that's not a literal requirement. Right. Yeah. I understand. The Ohio State quarterback can probably help you sell Coke or sell cars. I get that right? Yeah, sure. Okay. You're right. No D three athlete or very few D three athletes will ever actually help the company sell anything. But you don't have to do that part, right? Right. You can just put together an NIL deal and give. That's right. Give a student money and that's where. So what does D three mean? One of the things I've always said,'cause I've been D three pretty much my whole career, right? Westminster College. Blackburn College, Otterbein. Like I've been around D three for 25 years and I loved that. I would always say, and still do for now, this is college athletics as it was meant to be. Yes. It's pure amateurism. It's. Students who play because they love their sport and they love their school and they love their teammates, we're not paying them to play. Right. And that resonates with people. This is what it's supposed to be. But NIL cuts directly against that and it's here. Is there a way, is there a way to enforce this? Or a D three simply can't put any of that money, any of that NIL money in their financial aid. Well, it's not in financial aid. My understanding, and, and Matt, I'm gonna put the caveat, I'm no lawyer or expert on this stuff, right? But my understanding is it has to be an outside group. Like it's designed to be like a company, your local Ford dealer, you know, whatever. But instead, the outside group is turning into alumni booster clubs, right? That are not controlled by the university. The university cannot directly put that money into financial aid, but you could have a booster group. And I think this is happening in D three now. Go to that really great point guard and say, Hey, I know the, the college financial aid thing with you have a$20,000 bill and we have a$10,000 NIL deal for you. So why don't you go to Otterbein and play point guard. So it's not technically financial aid, it's NIL and it's not from the university, it's from the boosters. But the line is so fuzzy that it's meaningless and I think we're just professionalizing D three. All right. You talked about Westminster in Blackburn. I was the head coach and athletic director at Maryville for many years. I, I think we, oh, yeah. I think we had some overlap. So I coached against those schools and I, I can't imagine for the life of me there ever being anything like that at any of those schools. Yeah. Where, where, where would that have come from? At a black burner in Maryville. Here's my worry, Matt, is this is gonna cannibalize what limited athletic fundraising we have. And so instead of a booster giving to pay, help us pay for our new bleachers in the That's right. They're gonna give to the NIL and say, well, I, I helped out Otterbein'cause I gave to the N-L-N-I-L booster group. And so there's not, I don't think I, there's always more money to be raised. Don't get me wrong. But I it at some point with, for an individual donor, it's a zero sum game and I gave my 10 grand for the NIL Booster club as opposed to my 10 grand for the new bleachers. And so I do think we're competing with ourselves at the end of the day. I agree. So I'm gonna go back to my initial question that I did, I butchered and I didn't ask it very well. But let's say that NLI money comes to you, okay. And, and the idea is we're gonna give you a million dollars and we want that million dollars to be divvied up. Half non-athletes, half athletes. Does the NCAA get in your way if it's going to both? I think so long. If the university's distributing the aid and athletics is a criteria to the award, we are not allowed to do it. If so, yes, I do think that gets in way. What if, what if it's, what if it's not? Because at the end of the day, what does an audit look like? It's about, is there consistency between non-athletes and athletes? Am I wrong in that? That's what the audit is. But if we had a scholarship fund that had, so for example, we've, we, I think it was Blackburn, maybe I, maybe we did this at Otterbein. I, I forget which school it was, but we had some scholarship endowments like from the seventies or something like that, where it said this is, this is for a student from whatever county who's a student athlete, whatever, whatever. We had to change that language to take student athlete out. And put in student leadership and being a student athlete is part of student leadership and so they would still qualify, but you couldn't have any criteria to do with athletics is my understanding. Alright, so that's, this gets back to the heart of my point. All right. Can we, can we convince these boosters that we can't promise you it's gonna go to athletics? We can't even say it is it's ever gonna go to an athlete. But why not have the mindset from your admissions and financial aid, we're gonna work together and create some balance there and help the coaches make sure the kids they're bringing in are getting it. Can we do it on the down low or is that still icky? Oh, that's icky. I think so what I want is a donor. If, if Matt and, and I, I, I can tell you've got a million dollar check, you're ready to write it and you can write to Otterbein.'cause after this conversation, you're all in. Right? And you're, you're gonna say, I want it to be for student financial aid. Now that million dollars or whatever, it spins out. We can use for athletes and non-athletes alike, right? But I would feel very, with the current division three rules, ill at ease about using ATH athletic participation as any criteria at all. I wouldn't even wanna look at, well, we want it to make 30% of our students are athletes. Let's make at least 30% of the money should go to athletes. I don't think you can use that at all, given the current structure. Which is another reason that you, Matt, as a donor who wants to support athletics, might be tempted to put that money into an NIL booster group because then it is going to athletics. Exactly. And athletes to be, not athletics, but athletes. Yeah. And, and I'm trying to come at this and I'm not a lawyer and I'll never pretend to be a lawyer. I'm trying to come at this in a way where we can do this. And get the NIL out of, out of the way and keep D three the way it is. I'm trying to, that's, that's, that's my whole focus with this. I, I don't wanna lose that possibility. So can we go this route? Can we just tell everybody that's a part of recruiting athletes to say, this is what we're looking for. This is, these are, these are the things we want Tell your baseball coach, but tell your biology professor. Tell your, whoever's in charge of your band, can we say, we're looking for this and we wanna make sure this sum of money or this lump of money goes to those type of kids. Sure. And ath athlete never needs to be a part of the conversation, but we're trying to find balance across all of those extracurriculars and your academic programs. Yeah. And if I'm following you, I think that's what we do now. Okay. And so we publish our, our merit scholarships and our, and our need based, based on Pell are known things. And so a coach would know if they find a great point guard who's also a 4.0 GPA and a 32 a CT, they're getting a presidential scholarship and a full ride. They know that. And so they can I'm sure use that as they're thinking about this. But it's, you know, those are also the students we're all chasing. It's, it's the, it's the race to, to merit. Well, it's, it's at the end of the day, and this is the challenge that the NCAA continues to face, this face for years, it's, it comes down to enforcement. It doesn't matter what rule we put in place or what we all agree to or what we accept if we can't enforce it. Yeah. But let's. So I think division three is in this land between, and, and we have not, I, I just joined the, I haven't done anything yet, but the president's advisory group for D three and, you know, Troja is chairing the whole caboodle and, and doing, doing the whole thing. So I'm just now getting into this, but it strikes me, NIL. Is directly at odds with this. We don't do athletics, financial aid, athletic scholarship bit, and that's eventually gonna come to a head. Then as I am very resistant to the idea of giving up on D three with the philosophy we have true amateurism, right? You see the NCAA with the vote of its institutions doing things like allowing for immediate transfer and eligibility. We know Matt. That when a student transfers from school to school, their chances of graduating with a bachelor's degree are cut in half. Yeah. And yet the NCAA division three, my peers voted that in 95% to 5%, and I was in the 5% voting. No, that's not a division three thing to do. We got that wrong. We put our students last. Well, that was, that was athletics before student success, and it was wrong. And so we've gotta get our hearts right about what Division three is even supposed to be financially. And in terms of our goal in Division III is to get these student athletes amazing athletic and leadership experiences and get'em graduated and allowing'em to transfer all over the country and play for four schools in four years. It's bad for those students we shouldn't have done for forget graduation. Just just learning how to be an adult, learning how to live in the world. Yeah, and this is all residue from D one where athletics at this point, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with the institution. Yeah. It's just a side enterprise and a professional sports league. And in a professional sports league, your athletes can move around because they're making money and doing whatever that's, they're not there to go to school. That's right. A lot of these sports and so we ought to be. As far away from that in D three as we can get. And yet, well, they're doing it in D one that, that we should do that too. And athletic directors love this idea. Presidents need to do a better job of pushing back. I agree. I agree. I I'm 100% behind you. I, I just, I, I'm talking to coaches and athletic directors and presidents every day and, and I, and I want to understand it better. I want to understand.'cause right now it just feels like quicksand. It, it doesn't feel like there's any structure. It doesn't feel like there's any direction. I'm talking to division one head coaches that have to bring in a class and, and they still don't know how much scholarship they're gonna have for next year. Yeah. And so Matt, let's get in, let's get in the way out machine for a second. Yeah. And, and you know, they're gonna kick me off this NCAA committee if anyone, you know, if the, if the central office listens to this, but that's okay. One of the things that many of us are talking about is the eventual de demise of the ncaa, right? That when the power conferences leave D one and set up their own March Madness tournament, the revenue stream with the NCAA falls apart and probably the NCAA falls apart. And in D one you'll have the power conferences doing their things. And all the non-power conference D two and D three schools will be left out on their own. And so then we'll end up with a much more conference oriented. Probably limited opportunity for national championships, but conferences will drive it. And then maybe in those smaller settings, you can get this right a little more easily. Like, and, and not that we're all trying to be Ivy League schools, but like the Ivy League has sort of skewed a lot of the D one practices. Yeah. Because in their conference they've decided they have a different value set. I, I would hope the conference that we're in the OAC would do that. But that, that's, at the moment we're beholden to ncaa. Changes. So you can see a light at the end of this tunnel, even if the NCAA is to fall apart. And I, and, and we can create a good model and maybe we can then go back to my original question to you. We can have other conferences emulate and maybe eventually we get back to a national type of thing, but maybe, maybe we're gonna be better if it's conference focused. I, I'm not rooting for the demise of the ncaa, but I also don't think it's catastrophic for schools like us. I mean, D three is at this point, so huge, Matt, that an opportunity at a national tournament much less a national championship is, is myopic. Yeah. And so, okay, you don't have an NCAA championship structure anymore. We have conference drives, things and you wanna be conference champion. Okay. That's sort of how we operate anyway. It's very rare that, you know, we're making these national. Tournaments anyway, although we just did, we just had a national champion last year, so I shouldn't say that. Yeah. When women women's wrestling, we have a national champion. That's right. But it's rare. Yeah, it is. It's hard. And it's the most schools in any division level, that's what people don't understand, where it's, it's almost 450 schools in most sports and Division one doesn't have that. Division II doesn't come close to that, so it's when you win something that big, it's, it's very cool. I didn't even have NIL on my list of questions for you, so I don't want to take up this entire podcast talking about it. But let's, let's leave this conversation with a little hope as we move on to other things. We just heard John Kalari and Rick Pitino, two of the biggest names in college basketball, stand in front of cameras yesterday, in the last week, and say, we are not recruiting high school kids, just flat outside. We we're, it doesn't make any sense for us when we have the portal. So we talked about the NAL, we talked about this madness above at the division one level. What hope is there for that family that's raised a great kid. They've worked hard, good grades, great student athlete, and they want to, they want to keep playing, but they're just, they're not sure what all this noise means to them. What's the hope for them? Well, the hope for them is that D three State clings to its values, right? Yeah. Because I, I don't, I don't blame. If you, as an 18-year-old, have a reasonable prospect of going pro in your sport and making real money and, and chasing that dream, go for it. Go to Ohio State and play football and hope you get drafted and make millions of dollars. I, no one's gonna blame you for that. Right. And that makes the Ohio State Football team and other power conferences, football, basketball teams, minor leagues for the pros, if we're being honest about what, what they're, what they're doing. Right? Yeah. And becoming pros themselves is there, you know, you can get paid millions of dollars as a college student now in an IL deal. So they're pros themselves, but the reality is no one's ever going to come to Otterbein with a reasonable expectation of turning pro in their sport. And, and, and if anyone out there is listening thinking, I'm gonna be an NFL player, then you probably don't wanna play football at Otterbein. You're gonna have great experience and we'd love to have you. But this is not a pipeline to the NFL and we're not designed to be. And so for those who just wanna play because they love it, if we can maintain what has made DD three different and I think better than D one and D two, then we're gonna be okay. It. This NIL thing starts to blur that line, and it depends on whether our schools and our boosters begin to really put real money into NIL and mess that all up. Yeah. And that's not entirely within our control. Yeah, money. Money causes all of our problems it seems like these days. Okay, let's, you, you talked about early on about the great programs you have to help those financial needy families get into your school, but that still comes down. You have to make the grade to get that money, to earn that Pell Grant at your school, to earn that, that that institutional money that you're, that you're offering to make that affordable. How do we get these parents to understand how important that is so they don't figure it out at 17? Wow. We could go to Otter by and tuition free, and we're only making 40,000 a year. How do we get parents to understand at the sixth and seventh, six and seven year olds, eight year olds. That, that there has to be homework every night. There has to be collaboration every night. There has to be something that you're, you're showing your kid, this is the value here. You can get a great education, have a great start to your life. If we focus on your grades early, how do we do that so those parents don't get there and go, oh, we could have had this, we could have gone to college for nothing. Yeah. Well there's, there's a couple things that come to mind, Matt, and again, I don't pretend to have the solutions to all these. Sure. You're bringing up some big societal issues and if I had, I have the answers I'd, I'd be running for something. So first it's on us as a higher education sector to do a better job of educating about access and affordability issues. One, we need schools to walk that walk and not enough schools walk that walk. They talk the talk, but ultimately all their aid goes to 30 acts who come from wealthy families. That's right. In suburban high schools. So that's, that's empty words at that point. If you're talking about access and affordability and that's what you're doing. So we have to walk the walk. Then we have to spread the word, and this is part of what we've created with the High Stricker price model, is we're scaring these families who are making 40 grand a year. No one's ever been to college. They don't get, that's not a real number. And so we need to do a better job. This is where at at Otterbein we we, this is a local solution and a national solution. We deliberately partner where we know those families and those students are, so we're. In with the Columbus City schools and we're in the programs that are helping first generation students get to college and we're in the affordable housing nonprofits, working with them to spread the word that your kids can go to otterbine as opposed to thinking private schools would be impossible for you. So there's local things, but I would think. None of this matters unless schools get their heart right about actually investing in students who deserve a chance. Yeah. And not just 30 a CT I'm not knocking 30 a CT students. I just sent a 30 a CT student off to college. But they, they're good. And we, they, they deserve their aid too. But if that's what your yardstick is for success, well, you're in a shrinking pool of potential applicants and potential students, and it's not gonna work. All right. Let's take the, let's take the big society issue and bring it home for you. Yeah. How important is it that you have a relationship with the superintendent and principals in your community to say, I want my people in your school?'cause you should have, you should want my people in your school talking to your families. You, you, you should, once a year, you should have somebody from Otterbein or whatever that local college is in here talking to them about, Hey. If you keep your grades here, this is what it can become. This is what you can do. So when you see a$60,000 year price tag, that's not gonna happen. That's not your reality. If you decide you want to control it now, if you want to do the work now, is that a way that we can take that big picture and shrink it a little bit If, if our presidents have those relationships with the superintendents in the, in the school districts? Yeah, I, I think that helps certainly. So I, I, I know most, all the superintendents in Central Ohio and a number beyond and certainly this is always my leading thing, is we're, we're about access and affordability. Your students that are worried about affording college, we want to be, and the superintendents always get it and respond well when you get to the school level. And you're talking to the principal and the guidance counselor where the rubber hits the road in the high school, in the junior high middle school, this sort of stuff. The problem becomes, we are seen as biased actors. We're there to recruit for Otterbine, and so if they're gonna let us in and have a special assembly, well, they need to let Capital University in an Ohio, Dominican and Ohio Wesleyan, an Ohio State, an Ohio University, and so they tend to be. See us all, which I don't blame them for. We're all the same and no one gets special time. And so even if we showed up with, well, no, no, no, no, no. We have a special pitch about why you can really afford college. Even if you're Pell eligible, even you have no money for it. There's still ways to do it. They're gonna hear that as we're gonna go in there and make a special otter buying pitch. And I don't blame them for that, but it's, it's a hard nut to crack. Yeah. It's, it's, it seems that we're just constantly chasing our tail. Yeah. Yeah. And, and sometimes we just need to see the forest for the trees a little bit that I think most presidents are, are trying to do what you're doing. They're trying to make it affordable. They're trying to give first generation kids and second generation kids more opportunities. We just have so much ignorance out there and, and that's my concern. I, I want more competency. I want more. I want more teachers understanding. I've gotta be talking about this in my math class. I gotta be talking about this in my history class. In pe I gotta be talking about, Hey, you're a great athlete, but if you're not doing well in history and math and English and science, being a great athlete's not gonna mean much for you after you leave here. Yeah. Yeah. And we, there's also an issue of social promotion and grade inflation in K through 12 to the point where we can't tell what GPAs mean outta school sometimes anymore. And, and so there, there's a variety of things wrapped into this that make this more difficult. I'll tell you, Matt, one of the, one of the most disappointing results I've ever gotten in higher ed is when I came here about eight years ago. Our VP for enrollment and I, you know, share this philosophy and this vision for access and affordability. And we said, well, why don't we, you know, get rid of the$34,000 sticker price and just price it. At 16, 17, whatever the actual net generally is, and just be transparent. And it's not a great analogy. Be the, the Saturn of higher ed where there's no negotiation. It is what? Saturn's a bad example.'cause they close. We don't wanna close, but you know. You know what I mean? Yes, I know exactly what you mean. Yes. PE people don't trust higher ed. Let's be the trustworthy school was the idea. And so before we did that, we hired a marketing company to come do a research study. Course of, you know, what would be the impact right before we do this? Well, the answer is what families want, expect, are motivated by is a really high sticker price and a really high scholarship. The, the, the, I'm not kidding. The, we asked families, you know, would you be more likely to attend a school that costs 17,000 and gives you no scholarships or costs 30,000 and gives you$15,000? We test all these different levels. We would be better off at Otterbein with a hundred thousand dollars sticker price and everyone gets an$85,000 scholarship. That's what they want. That's right. And so we have this ill-informed consumer base that doesn't. Isn't prepared with their understanding of what all this even means and they're getting, we get students, I'm sorry, I'm ranting now Matt, but like I, we get students here all the time. We're like 33, 30$4,000, and we'll have a student that we gave a$15,000 scholarship to, and then they went up the road to a school that costs$50,000 and they got a$25,000 scholarship. They'll come to us, well, they gave us 25 and we say, well do the math. They want five,$10,000 more from you than we do, but there's this perceived value that is infuriating because that$50,000 is a made up number. It might as well be a hundred thousand. And here comes the coach in me that's saying, I don't want that kid that can't do basic edition of subtraction. Go to that other school. It's mom and dad too though. Mom and dad. Yeah. Johnny got$25,000 to go to Whoopty. Whoopty, whoop. It's nonsense. It's nonsense. It's so nonsense. But they think it's real. All right. Talk to me about. What you want out of your coaches. What, and and this can be very vague as well. Yeah. What kinda leaders are you looking for? Because I, it was funny, I, when I talked to Jim, Jim said, every coach that we bring into interview, I have put'em on a whiteboard and say, explain to me your philosophy. Explain to me who you are, what, what is gonna be defining for your. For your program, and I love that. You know, I've, I've interviewed for a hundred coaching jobs. No one's ever done that to me. What is your expectations for your coaches in terms of who they are and how they represent the university and what their role is? Yeah, well let's just start by saying Troja is gonna do a better job than everybody else to begin with. There's no whiteboard in here. Whatever. God bless him though. So. Well, you know, it's, everybody has their different way to attack it. That's great. Yeah. What I talk to coaches about and, and this is sort of coaches, I think tend to be practical people, right? Yeah. You, you can, you can talk up in the clouds all you want. They're thinking about on the field, on the court, what do I gotta do? How do I, how do I run this play? Like they're just practical people and I love that about it. And so, and surrounding talking up in the clouds, I tend to coach as about recruit, retain, and win. Okay. And these things feed off of each other. It's, it's a virtuous cycle or it's a cycle that takes you down into nowhere. Right? Right. And so if you can recruit, well, then hopefully you're getting a roster that has some talent on it. And then D three without a fair scholarships, and let's pretend there's no NIL. That has always been, you need some volume on your roster to have some talent. Yes. Right, right. I mean, that's just the way D three works. And so if you can recruit. Some students in, then you're gonna start to have some success. You're gonna build a positive culture and then retain those students, not just on your team and in your program, but at the institution. Right. And these things feed on each other. And when I say win, I always tell coaches I don't have to have a conference championship every year, but we have to be competitive. Yeah. No one wants to play for the oh and 30 team. That's, that's, that's terrible. Right. That's not a good experience. That's right. It's not fun, it's not uplifting, it's not a positive thing. And so you have to be. 500 at least to be competitive, like you're not getting blown out, you're in the mix is what matters then, right? Occasionally run for a conference championship, that's great. And so these things can feed on each other. Or if you're losing program, and we've had those too, where you can't recruit to a losing program, students leave a losing program. The program gets to be more and more losing because you can't recruit and retain. You've gotta get those three working in sync together, moving up, not down. I love it. And it, it seems so simple, right? It's, it just sounds so easy, right? I mean, why, why don't we all do it? Yeah. And, and, and at the end of the day, where I am mentor coaches is I go, you don't understand your university. You're, you're recruiting against yourself. You don't know how your financial aid works. You don't know how your admissions works. You don't know the strength of your academic programs. You know, I talk to coaches that win national championships and they go, yeah, we're really good at physical therapy. Half my roster is physical therapists. We've got a great nursing program. Half of my roster is nurses, you know, and it's smart, you know, they know what they're going after. They're not reaching for, for things that are only gonna hurt them in the long run. So I love the mentality. And I think the more we keep it simple, the the better it is. Thank you for doing this. I know you've got a meeting and I want to talk recruiting with you, but thank you for having this big picture conversation. I know how hard it is to talk about because we just don't have answers, but I love the fact that you're looking at it from a perspective is. Whoever wants to come here, we're gonna give'em a great education. We're gonna be open armed. We're gonna make sure that if this is what they choose, we're gonna make sure they're not leaving here with a a hundred thousand dollars in debt and they've got an opportunity to go have a career when they leave here. Right. That's right, that's right. And Matt, thanks for leading this conversation. Thanks sir. Thanks, Matt. That brings us to the end of part one of my conversation with Dr. John Erford, president of Otterbine University. What stood out today is his willingness to speak plainly about the cost of college and the barriers that keep families from even considering options that might actually be their best fit. He doesn't sugarcoat it, and that honesty is refreshing, but we're just getting started in part two. Dr. Erford comes back and we're gonna shift gears and he's gonna share his perspective on college recruiting, what he expects from his coaches, what he believes families should understand about the process, and how leadership at the top can shape an entire athletic department's culture. If you're a student athlete, a parent, or a coach, you won't wanna miss it. For more tools and resources to help guide your own college journey, visit coach matt rogers.com, and if you haven't already, hit that subscribe button. It's free. It costs you nothing, and it makes sure you never miss conversations like this one. Until next time, stay focused, stay humble, and keep chasing significance.