Elite, Not Elitist: Reimagining Public Higher Education with Pradeep Khosla
Hi, Grant.
Grant Oliphant:Hey, Crystal.
Crystal Page:How are you today?
Grant Oliphant:I am really good. How about you?
Crystal Page:I am good. I'm excited for today's conversation.
Grant Oliphant:We're gonna be talking with Pradeep Khosla, who's the chancellor of UCSD and a real powerhouse in our region and in American higher education. I think of him as, and I and I say this acknowledging that he's a friend as well, but I I I think of him as one of the real change makers in our region who is demonstrating the power of a great vision applied over time.
Crystal Page:Right. And I think as the chancellor or the head of UC San Diego, he's really brought out brought about the next iteration of what that university is to the city and the county.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. And he's very clear that he inherited a solid foundation, a good institution, but it was interesting because he inherited an institution that was very new and had to figure out how to build it into its next iteration of what it could be. I think this is a really important conversation in light of what's happening nationally with medical research and and with, research universities and the role of higher ed in our society. We touch on a lot of things that are on people's minds at the moment, and hopefully, they'll find this as worthwhile as I did.
Crystal Page:Yeah. Shall we dive in?
Grant Oliphant:Let's do it.
Crystal Page:Alright.
Grant Oliphant:Alright. Chancellor Pradeep Khosla, so good to have you here with us. Thank you for being here.
Pradeep Khosla:Thank you, Grant. Really good to see you again.
Grant Oliphant:It is always good to see you. I I think we need to start for our listeners by acknowledging that your real claim to fame, although you are chancellor of UCSD, is that you came from Pittsburgh.
Pradeep Khosla:That's right. It is one of my real claims to fame.
Grant Oliphant:Yes. And you and you and you own it, and you're married to a Pittsburgher, and you
Pradeep Khosla:I spent the first thirty years of my life when I came to The US, 1982 to 2012, in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon, Working a lot with you and many other philanthropy folks out there. So yep.
Grant Oliphant:Yes. You did.
Pradeep Khosla:Great learning experience. That's where I grew up, as I say.
Grant Oliphant:Well, a lot of us grew up during that time, and, you know, it was one of the great surprises for me when I moved to San Diego to discover because you were one of the very first people who reached out to me
Grant Oliphant:That you were here. And not only were you here leading UC San Diego, but you had built it into quite a behemoth at that point. And I'd love for you just to talk for a little bit about the change agenda that you came in to your role as chancellor with and and what you were focused on in that initial decade.
Pradeep Khosla:Right. So, you know, there's multiple ways to look at what happened here. So when I first came here, people asked me, like, what did you see at UC San Diego that that you wanted to come here? So the first thing I saw was a very public institution that was just bigger and public compared to Carnegie Mellon. Great sciences, great life sciences, great engineering, and also great arts that were not well recognized. Right? So I could see my thirty years as having impacted on a small private scale to coming to a public institution and really broadening the impact and rethinking, or at least in my mind, defining public education. The way I also explain to people is I saw like a diamond in the rough.
Pradeep Khosla:I saw a place that was like 55 years old or 52 years old.
Grant Oliphant:A very new institution.
Pradeep Khosla:Very new institution with great capacity, with great, inherent talent, inherent, accomplishments, but not many people knew about it. Even within the UC system, people thought of UC Berkeley and UCLA as a flagship.
Pradeep Khosla:So I just made that irritation my goal, to remove that irritation in my head. Right. And the way I was gonna do that was making sure that people recognize UC San Diego in the same breath as UCLA and UC Berkeley. Now that's the Chancellor's Complex, but what can I say?
Grant Oliphant:Well, and it and it has served you well. I I I think people, including it certainly was true of me when I came here. You were in the middle of a of a building boom. You were transforming the campus to become really kind of the center of a a city.
Pradeep Khosla:Right.
Grant Oliphant:And to have it be on the national radar for multiple areas of expertise. Was that your goal coming in? Did you know that's what you wanted to do, or did you figure out that was the the goal?
Pradeep Khosla:My goal after I came in. So after I came here, I spent the first eighteen months building a strategic plan, but part of the goal was to really go out there and talk to people. So the more I went out and talked to the local communities out here, the more I realized that they did not recognize UC San Diego as one of their institutions. They saw us as, hey, you're up in La Jolla, you're up on the mesa, you're a very elitist place, you don't like the common folks, you kind of bring people
Grant Oliphant:Oh, that was all the reputation.
Pradeep Khosla:Completely. And especially, you know, in San Diego, we call it South Of 8, which is where a lot of the underserved communities is. Right?
Pradeep Khosla:So the first question for me was, what is the role of a public institution? I will talk about that in a second. The next question for me was, why are we so small, and why is scarcity our claim to fame? So the UC system, like all institutions of higher education, they take pride in how selective they are.
Pradeep Khosla:So in my mind, they're taking pride in making their assets, and we're making their capabilities scarce, scarcely available. And that does not make sense to me. Right?
Pradeep Khosla:So my goal was to look at, can I think of abundance, and can I think of quality simultaneously? Because people see the bigger, the lower the quality. So can I think of the two in the same breath and be excellent on both axis? And that's where we are right now.
Grant Oliphant:That's such a great reframing. Well, let's let's dive into this question of what a public research university is for. And so you you realize that one of the ways that it you needed you wanted to change the institution was to make it more available, as it were, to the community. But let's step back from that for a moment and talk about why why are public research universities important, number one, and why do they matter to a region like San Diego?
Pradeep Khosla:Right.
Grant Oliphant:Why was it important?
Pradeep Khosla:One can look at it multiple ways. Right? So I think one reason they're important is because they are available to a large segment of the public in the state where they are or the state that they're serving. Right?
Pradeep Khosla:And they do this in a more egalitarian manner than by looking at them taking only top 2% or top 5% of the people who apply. So we are like we get 60,000 applications. We are the number two most applied to place in the country.
Grant Oliphant:Wow.
Pradeep Khosla:Number two in the country.
Grant Oliphant:Who's number one?
Pradeep Khosla:UCLA. 70,000, like 10,000 more.
Pradeep Khosla:So I guarantee we'll be number one in a couple of years.
Grant Oliphant:Mhmm. Okay. Here we go.
Pradeep Khosla:So so I think it's providing broad access. That's why they're important. Yeah. Secondly, it's providing capabilities to the local economy where you bring the money in, you spend the money locally, you build a research program, you bring PhD students, you bring faculty.
Pradeep Khosla:So you build a little economy around who you are. But that is necessary, but it's not what you really need is to be more than that, really build an economy for the region, to create jobs for the region. And I think this is where UC San Diego, in my mind, is a great exemplar because this is a little bit out there, but I think San Diego without UC San Diego is not the biotech hub. San Diego without UC San Diego is more like a navy place, more like a vacation place. But with UC San Diego, becomes like one of the top high-tech cities in the country.
Grant Oliphant:So, yeah, what we have come to think about is the future economy of San Diego, and in many respects, the future economy of a significant part of the country Comes from its association with the university.
Pradeep Khosla:Right. So we are like a $10,000,000,000 top line institution Yeah. And our economic impact is north of 25,000,000,000. So we have a very big economic impact.
Pradeep Khosla:And I think this is where the universities have to play an important role. But the other important role the universities have to play is be a member of the community. Universities exist in a community, and many times, they're not a member of the community.
Grant Oliphant:Right.
Pradeep Khosla:They're there, but they are not owned by the community. Right. And I want us to be owned by the community.
Grant Oliphant:I I wanted to get to this later, but since you brought it up now, let's just let's just go with it and talk about how do you do that?
Pradeep Khosla:So multiple ways. Right? So in the UC system, for example, because of our admissions policies, I cannot say the admissions are localized to San Diego or a hundred mile radius. The admissions are open for all of California.
Pradeep Khosla:But if I look at the role of a public institution, it's more than a four year education. Education can take the form of cultural awareness. It can take the form of using art and artistic representation to create more awareness and educate people. So it can take multiple forms. And given that we have such a great capacity in our visual arts, in music, in theater, and dance, one of the things I was able to do is articulate our strategy to be a destination for art and culture in addition to education and health care. And art and culture is open to everybody. Right? And so is health care, but not for your education.
Pradeep Khosla:So that way, we become more of the community for the community, rather than in the community for everybody else except the community.
Grant Oliphant:Another way in which I've seen you attempt to build this bond with community is at the very same time as you're building this presence in La Jolla on the Mesa, and expanding your footprint there, not geographically, but in terms of the buildings, you've also located downtown. You've you you created a facility called Park and Market.
Grant Oliphant:You just recently, purchased a building that you've rebranded The Depot That for which we're providing funding to help turn it into an arts center. Well, I mean, it's I think thank you on behalf of the community for preserving that asset and and wanting to turn it into an arts incubator. So actually, thank you.
Grant Oliphant:But why would a university that's that is really really has this status of being a top tier research university also be focused on trying to reach out to the community in the way that you are?
Pradeep Khosla:Because remember, research is not the only goal we have. Our goal is education. And in my mind, education takes a broad range of definitions from a four year program, a master's program, a PhD program, to as simple as managing the birch aquarium and having a sixth grader sixth grade class come to the aquarium and tell them more about climate change and ocean acidification Right. And the marine life. So I see our role as much broader than just a typical four year institution.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. Which I so appreciate about your leadership in the of the university. I'm gonna bring us back to the research university role again, though Let's do it. For a moment. And I I think it's important in the context of what we see happening in America right now and and the challenges facing research universities.
Grant Oliphant:And at the moment, as a result of a series of unexpected federal actions You're looking at an environment where you're having to respond fairly constantly to budget cuts and revocations of student visas, and what do you what is it like to lead in this environment at the moment?
Pradeep Khosla:Actually, it is really challenging to lead in this environment, not because of what is happening, but because we don't know what will happen tomorrow. So there's whole whole range of uncertainties. So if I knew with certainty I was only gonna get thousand visas a year, for example, and no more, then I know how to manage, how to grow the place, how to manage the place within but if I don't know how many visas I'll get, who will get it, who will not get it, when would they be revoked, would personal liberties be violated, It creates a very challenging situation as a leader to really articulate a mission and a vision based on, equity and justice, while what we are seeing out there is not quite, supporting the vision we have.
Grant Oliphant:Right. How do you manage as well the the budget uncertainty that you're seeing? And you've been you've been fairly outspoken about this. The concerns that you have and your colleagues around California and the country have spoken about it as well, that medical research, various types of scientific research are are being threatened. What are you actually looking at in terms of the threats to to budgets?
Pradeep Khosla:I think, clearly, the federal government has a role in supporting research. And in my mind, when they support research, they are basically reducing the risk of discovering the unknown and then using the risk reduction to then go further and commercialize it. Right? I mean, that's how it's that's the pipeline how it works. If the federal government decides, not to support research, I think it'll be extremely unfortunate because this country, the economy is 100% or 80% or 90% technology driven.
Pradeep Khosla:Without technology, there is hardly much economy or the growth, right, that we are seeing. Right?
Grant Oliphant:Right.
Pradeep Khosla:So in my mind, it's important that we keep on investing in technology. And so I see my job as being a strong advocate both for the institution and for technology in the country to create the support, create the advocacy so that we in The US continue to be at the cutting edge. Of not just being a leading economy, but leading the world in technological innovation, and therefore, our capability to bring more people out of poverty.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. I'm curious how how you think about making that case in in an an environment like this. And there's there are multiple levels of this. Because you head head a university, you have to deal with them all. Lucky you.
Grant Oliphant:. But they but the you know, at one level, it's stating the institutional case for why funding a scientific research matters to the future of the country. That's one argument. Then there's the argument about civil liberties and the and the and the rights of students, and and faculty to do things that you do or don't agree with, but that are still enshrined in the constitution or protected. And then there's the the importance of of not sending the wrong signals about this being a welcoming environment for intellectual inquiry and for, all in an environment where all of these issues are hotly politically contested
Grant Oliphant:Right. And you're trying not to get into the politics. So what does advocacy look like on those various issues at a time like this?
Pradeep Khosla:Like making a rational case. Looks like telling, for example, the lawmakers either in Sacramento or in DC or wherever you might be getting your funding from, explaining to them how without basic understanding of cellular and molecular medicine, we would not make have a better understanding of how cancer develops, for example. So if you wanna conquer a disease, we need to understand the biological principles of the human body and what leads to that disease. And that's what research is all about. Research is not about just randomly thinking thoughts and writing something up.
Pradeep Khosla:It's actually methodically investigating phenomena that we think will help us understand the implications of that phenomena as it relates I'm talking about medicine. The same is true about engineering. I mean, if you wanna build a bridge that spans like one kilometer or a thousand meters, we need to understand, like, how does one measure the strength of materials? How does one characterize it? What materials are strong?
Pradeep Khosla:What makes sense? So if you look at the history of technology, it's not recent. The history of technology is, I don't know, at least 70 some years old, where we have been building from the steam engine on. We're building more and more technology, becoming better and better at extracting more and more value out of the materials we have And making our livelihood or our living more efficient and more productive. Right? So with the same land, we are now, I don't know, feeding like close to 8,000,000,000 people And we'd be feeding 10,000,000,000 people. So we need to understand how do you improve the productivity of the land.
Pradeep Khosla:We need to see how the disease is not gonna take your crop production down. Right? We need to understand how the rainfall patterns are changing and how the crop product you see what I'm saying? So I can just go down the list. I mean, research is everywhere.
Grant Oliphant:So to the to the skeptic or the person who who who maybe is even receptive to that argument, but who says, yeah. Great. We should we should support scientific research, but, isn't it also appropriate to to cut the expenses associated with that? And so, you know, if the if the administration decides they wanna, cut, the reimbursement rates back to 10% or whatever the number is, why is that a bad thing? And and how does it cause harm?
Grant Oliphant:Your answer would be what?
Pradeep Khosla:So my answer would be that long time ago, the reimbursement rate, or what's now called the facilities and administration. Okay. So when you do research Yeah. Lay this out for me.
Pradeep Khosla:Okay. Let me just explain it. When when you do research, there are what we call direct costs. There is the cost of the faculty member and her compensation.
Pradeep Khosla:There is a cost of the test tubes. There's a cost of some microscopes or some facility or some instruments that we need to understand the phenomena we are looking at. Then there are indirect costs, like the building you need to be in, like the janitorial services, like the light, like air conditioning. So the building you're in probably has research from 10 different agencies, hundred different principal investigators, and you cannot say that this part of electricity is used for that project. So there's this cost that is smeared over this whole business of doing research, and that cost, which cannot be allocated to a single project directly, is an indirect cost. The federal government has ways to measure that. The auditors come to your campus. They tell you what is included, what is not included.
Pradeep Khosla:They audit it every three to five years. And based on that, they come up with a rate. And invariably, the rate we would have is more than what they let's say What they would allow. Yeah. So let's say our rate is like 62%.
Pradeep Khosla:They say, no, we're only gonna give you 58. Right? Because the facilities part and the administration part, the administration part is capped at, like, 26%, if I'm not mistaken. So there is a methodology behind this. This is not a random thing Yeah.
Pradeep Khosla:That me or the PI or my CFO gets up and says, oh, the answer is 29. This is not the McLaughlin show.
Grant Oliphant:So there's actually a method to it.
Pradeep Khosla:Yes. Completely. Audited method.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. And that system has been set aside, and now you're be you're having cuts imposed on you in kind of a random way. And if I understand the stakes that you've laid out, the stakes are pretty stark in that the role a university like yours plays, at least on the research front, is that you're helping discover cures to disease. Right. You are helping move forward the realm of scientific inquiry inquiry.
Grant Oliphant:Even something like AI, which the whole country is talking about, we're in the middle of an AI race. Much of the original thinking around that and research has been done at universities like yours. Right. So all of that leadership is, in theory, in peril. Is that correct?
Grant Oliphant:If we if we don't figure out a way to adequately fund it?
Pradeep Khosla:I I think look, the pendulum swings back and forth. I mean, the birth of the research university is a post World War two phenomenon, you know, and Because of a lot of technology that was developed during that time, we won the war. And then
Grant Oliphant:Right.
Pradeep Khosla:A lot of migration happened, great scientists came to The US, and then we kept on supporting more and more research. So the research the federal government has been very generous in supporting research. Right? Mhmm. So I think what we as recipients of that money, and we as scientists and technologists, need to show that we are using the money responsibly and that it's making an impact that is expected from us.
Pradeep Khosla:So I think this is a conversation that needs to just keep on happening. I mean, there is no answer, there's no single answer which is gonna be true forever.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. You really are I mean, I I I've known this about you for a long time. You're a believer in dialogue. You you mentioned a moment ago rational conversation and rational thought. Right.
Grant Oliphant:And in the meantime, while you're trying to have that conversation, what adjustments do you make as an institutional leader? And how are you how are you planning for this period of uncertainty?
Pradeep Khosla:Institutionally so if, for example, an expense is not needed today for our to accomplish our mission. I basically put a stop to it. So would I like to have more new buildings? Absolutely. But are they, like, absolutely necessary for what we're doing today? No. So we're gonna stop the construction of buildings. So we just have to be more thoughtful about how we are using our cash, how we're using our resources.
Pradeep Khosla:And we just have to keep on focus, keep on being focused on our mission. Our mission is to educate and to discover knowledge, to create knowledge, and to disseminate knowledge. And I think that's what, we should be focused on doing.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. I appreciate the the the calm way in which you think about the set of challenges and that you're you're sort of resolute on trying to navigate your way through it as best you can. Is there anything else you'd like to add on that subject before we before we move on?
Pradeep Khosla:Yeah. I I think, look, these are transients. Even in your personal life, there are setbacks that people have. It doesn't make you stop living.
Pradeep Khosla:Mhmm. I mean, that's exactly the lesson we learned. And an institution is just a very big version of every individual. And we wanna make sure that whatever the impediments are, whatever the setbacks are, whatever the challenges are Does not kill the institution.
Pradeep Khosla:It allows the institution to keep on functioning with a vision and a mission so that it can keep on serving society. So that's how I think about the whole thing.
Grant Oliphant:Great. So let's come back to the institution then and the you know, where we where we started in talking about the the long term vision that you developed after you came here and then talked to the community and heard about what it what the community's interests were. You really did invest heavily in building buildings and creating more student housing than I think any other is it is it what is this the the number again or the the statistic that you use that you will eventually have more student housing?
Pradeep Khosla:So we are the second largest housing program on any campus in the country.
Grant Oliphant:Amazing.
Pradeep Khosla:And in a couple of more years
Grant Oliphant:Driven by what?
Pradeep Khosla:So driven by a very simple observation. So remember what we're trying to do. We're trying to expand access.
Grant Oliphant:Right.
Pradeep Khosla:The demand for higher education, and especially UC education in California, is unbelievable.
Grant Oliphant:Right.
Pradeep Khosla:Okay? So even when much of the country's dealing with reductions in interest in higher education, reductions in applications, we at UC San Diego, and I think we in the UC, are only seeing increases in our application rates in interest in education. And UC San Diego being one of the top UCs, everybody wants to come to UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, UCLA. You know what I'm saying?
Grant Oliphant:Right.
Pradeep Khosla:I mean, we're all great institutions. I mean, like, all of our UCs are really spectacular institutions. So my goal, number one, is to expand access, and number two is to make it affordable. So if you just look at the cost of education so right now, our tuition would be, let's say, ballpark, $15,000. But to live on campus or to live outside campus for a nine month period could easily exceed $20,000 to live outside campus.
Pradeep Khosla:$20,000. So already, the cost we people complain about the tuition But the real cost is in living Which people forget. And we don't control the cost.
Pradeep Khosla:Right? The u c u c I don't control the cost of living. But what do I what can I control? I can control housing.
Pradeep Khosla:I can build housing on campus and make it below market. So my promise to the regents was that I will build housing on campus, and I'll make it at least 20% below market. Right? And the 20% number, there's multiple explanations, but for me, the reason to be below market was the land was given to me by the feds, by the city
Pradeep Khosla:By the citizens of the state and of this country. And not having to pay for the land and building housing, I think I have saved some money that I can give back to the families of the students who are coming to UC San Diego.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. And bravo to you.
Pradeep Khosla:So we are at least 20%. We're more like 30% below market. Right? So that way, we are controlling the cost of education, and we are creating more access.
Pradeep Khosla:And I do believe that residential learning is the best form of learning. It's the best form of student experience.
Grant Oliphant:And I cut you off. You you were about to say that in a couple of years, you will be the the biggest?
Pradeep Khosla:The largest housing program in the country.
Pradeep Khosla:Amazing.
Pradeep Khosla:Right. So my goal is to guarantee four year housing at at least 20% below market to everybody at UC San Diego.
Grant Oliphant:You know, I wanna tie that back to what you said earlier in in our conversation about leaning into an abundance philosophy as opposed to scarcity. Because it does seem as though higher ed, especially at the more exclusive levels, sort of did lean into this notion that to be considered the best, they had to turn away people and make it more expensive. And I think some of the unfortunate backlash we're seeing in the country directed towards higher ed may be because of that. How did you see your way around that when you came into this role?
Pradeep Khosla:I don't know how to answer that because I do think that education makes an impact only when more people are educated, not when fewer people are educated. So to me, abundance has
Grant Oliphant:We gotta write that one down. Yeah.
Pradeep Khosla:Has to be the way To think about it. It cannot be that by controlling access, I'm making myself better. So at so you see, when I got here, we were, I don't know, 24,000 students, something like that. And today, we are 46,000.
Grant Oliphant:So you've doubled.
Pradeep Khosla:So people's view was and again, look, I took a lot of flack from a lot of my own people saying you're growing too much. And in fact, there's a newspaper You're cheating the product. Like yesterday, you know, saying how we have become ugly because we have grown so much. So and I'll give you another example of why it's a wrong way to think about this.
Pradeep Khosla:So we not only grew, but our four year graduation rate, when we were 24,000, was fifty five percent.
Grant Oliphant:Fifty five percent.
Pradeep Khosla:Fifty five percent, which is very low, by the way. Yeah. When we are 46,000, our four year graduation rate is seventy seven percent. So we not only grew, but we also improved the educational outcomes, performance of the institution and of the individuals. So there are ways to think about this that people don't quite see, somehow people think by controlling access, you create I want us to be an elite institution.
Pradeep Khosla:I don't want us to be an elitist institution. In controlling access, you make yourself elitist. I want to be approached by everybody, and everybody should feel see themselves at UC San Diego.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. You you mentioned that you wanted to provide another example of why
Pradeep Khosla:So the when about five years ago, when we were thinking about when the light rail was supposed to be coming to town. So many, many years ago, they were gonna come to UC San Diego, but somehow the campus said no, and it went to San Diego State. Okay.
Pradeep Khosla:So when this opportunity came up one more time, this time I said, yeah, we want the light rail to be coming to UC San Diego. Right. So we will carve out a piece of our property, and we will give you the rights to go on that so we had a conversation with the city and the county. A lot of people who said, hey, you're gonna create easy access to campus. We're gonna get people who may who who we may not want here.
Pradeep Khosla:And in my mind, I don't think of people I don't want in my neighborhood.
Grant Oliphant:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Pradeep Khosla:I mean, if there's some such person, then I wanna be able to find a way to give that person an opportunity to change and not cut off access.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah.
Pradeep Khosla:We are a public institution, so I wanted to be connected to the neighborhood. So the way I positioned this was the light rail will allow us to go into the community and for the community to come in. So it's a two way movement of people back and forth, which is what we are trying to do, build deeper connections.
Grant Oliphant:So it's so interesting. I mean, I'm immediately reminded of the metro system in DC and how
Pradeep Khosla:Didn't go to Georgetown.
Grant Oliphant:It didn't go to Georgetown for precisely the same reason that people decided that they didn't want subway riders in their Right. Arriving in their neighborhood.
Pradeep Khosla:So when the light rail when we said we're gonna bring it to campus, that's when I bought the building in Park And Market because that is also a light rail stop. Alright. So there are two stops, one on my campus and one here, both reflecting each other in a philosophical way, who we are into the community and who the community is into us.
Grant Oliphant:And Park And Market, describe that neighborhood so people understand
Pradeep Khosla:So Park And Market is a building. It's on the edge of what one would say, the underserved part of downtown. But in that building, you see a microcosm of UC San Diego.
Pradeep Khosla:You see the arts. You see the visual arts. You see the performing arts. You see offices of philanthropic foundations. You see lectures happening there every so often. I mean, you see a little microcosm of what UC San Diego is. And as soon as we are done in one more year with this thing called the Triton Center that we're building on campus, we're going to be able to beam back and forth from Park And Market to the Triton Center and back. So the two will be connected also digitally, where we can literally experience what's happening at Park And Market on campus and vice versa
Grant Oliphant:So you can conduct an event in two places in real time.
Pradeep Khosla:Exactly. Exactly.
Grant Oliphant:So the other expression of that recently has been the Depot. And before we get into the Depot, because I do wanna come back to to that again, I wanna talk about you and your connection with the arts because what I think I think what people in would typically associate with UC San Diego because of the life sciences and the and the medical research that's happened there is that this is a campus that focuses on technology. It's emblematic of California's global leadership in terms of reinventing all manner of technology, but particularly in the life sciences space. Yet you have been somewhat quietly, but more vocally lately known as an advocate for the arts. And I'm I'm curious where that came from for you. You you very kindly mentioned your experience at Carnegie Mellon earlier, but but it's it it can't just be because you you saw the convergence there.
Pradeep Khosla:No. Actually, at Carnegie Mellon, I was not much involved with the arts at all. I mean, I was kinda involved academically, but not the way I'm here. Right? Look.
Pradeep Khosla:I went to a very elite undergraduate institution called the IIT, the Indian Institute,
Pradeep Khosla:which is now premier Right? Educational institution.
Pradeep Khosla:It is a very elite institution where my incoming class for the whole campus was only 50 students, and my class in engineering electrical engineering was only about, like, 25 students. So it was a very elite education. It was a five year, very technical education, and if we had humanities, it was to take a single course in, like, English or history or something or psychology. But we never had a full service humanities department, the sociology department, or so it was a very technical education, a very European way of being educated. So I literally spent five years of my life being a super nerd learning more about technology.
Pradeep Khosla:When I came to Shock. When I came to Carnegie Mellon, I mean, for the master's degree, I mean, the courses were so easy that I did not even think I was doing a master's because I knew really I had done more than what was happening there. Right?
Grant Oliphant:Right.
Pradeep Khosla:For me, the challenge was a different way of learning, a different way of being tested. Right. So what that has done is I've become, like in my life, a problem solver. So I see every issue as a problem that needs to be solved, a problem that has constraints that need to be satisfied. Some can be violated, others cannot be violated.
Pradeep Khosla:But somehow, we need to come at the other end with a solution. Mhmm. So I come to UC San Diego now, and I'm looking at the opportunities. Like, this is, like I said, a gem that needs to be polished. Mhmm.
Pradeep Khosla:This is a gem that needs to find its place on the crown. Mhmm. And I'm trying to figure out, like, what faces do I polish and how do I structure its position so that it really finds its right place in this ecosystem of San Diego.
Grant Oliphant:Mhmm.
Pradeep Khosla:So to me, arts was clearly an unutilized and un, how should I say, exploited capacity, and you put La Jolla Playhouse right there on our campus, which has sent a play to Broadway once every year for the last thirty seven years.
Grant Oliphant:Right.
Pradeep Khosla:Right. So you can see we have great assets. So I just put the whole thing together. I said, look, we need to use ours. We connected to education.
Pradeep Khosla:We connected to needs of society where we need to understand each other more culturally rather than understand only Newton's laws of motion. Right? So so to me, it was just like a no it all just fit in place. Right? And I was fortunate because of our growth and because of our good fundraising and significant support from the local community, we had raised resources that I could start investing in the arts.
Pradeep Khosla:And this community, if you look at it carefully, is very arts based. I mean, a lot of philanthropy out here is very arts based, including the foundation you lead, Conrad Prebys, who I knew well, was a big supporter
Grant Oliphant:Big supporter.
Pradeep Khosla:Like our music is called the Prebys Auditorium. Right? Exactly.
Grant Oliphant:Phenomenal acoustics.
Pradeep Khosla:Worked out well. I mean, it's just so I don't run around with a hammer in my hand trying to find every nail. I run around looking for issues, problems, and trying to figure out, like, how do we become relevant to society? How do we make an impact on the people who come and interact with us, who live in our neighborhood?
Grant Oliphant:So I I I, I have to digress for a moment on with more of a philosophical question about you know, because you somebody who comes from IIT, and it really is hard to overstate the excellence of that educational institution. But it really is around technology and around and and then you you go to a school that's Carnegie Mellon that's known primarily, although it has an excellent arts program, known primarily for its technology leadership. Then you come here, and I I just characterize that. Meanwhile, I think our our country is struggling with an understanding of what type of education matters. So we hear a lot about STEM.
Grant Oliphant:We hear a lot about the importance of of getting back to excellence in engineering and math, and decades of that have not necessarily produced that in our country. And I just came back from attending the TED conference in Vancouver, and the entire I would describe the entire week, Pradeep, as a a debate between AI and our humanness. Right. So which manifests a lot in the conversation as art. Right.
Grant Oliphant:So when you think about trying to educate the whole human on your campus, how do you think about putting together these pieces? You know, sure you have La Jolla Playhouse, which is extraordinary, and and now you have the depot downtown. But how do you think about integrating it into the way in which you approach education and the way in which our country should be rethinking education?
Pradeep Khosla:So it's a complicated question you've asked. So like, if you look at undergrad education in this country, it is basically based around the notion of educating a highly functioning citizen To maintain the democracy we have, to just make sure that it was not based around just pure skills. As the country has grown in population, as technology has grown, what we are finding is and more recent immigrants to this country, they want their kids to have more skills that can be used in finding jobs and a better living and a better livelihood.
Pradeep Khosla:Right? So this notion of, in the old days, if you were like from a princely family, you got educated very broadly in horse riding, in in hunting, and you know, just like the finer points of life. Here, we are using education now to live life more effectively rather than just the finer points of life.
Pradeep Khosla:And in my mind, part of art, humanities, social sciences is adding those finer points of life while you're also developing life skills to make a living. So to me, that's how it manifests itself. Now, that's for my four year for my kids, soon to come to UC San Diego. For the normal population, you know, for people who are working in the community, living in the community, may not have an undergrad degree, they still have an appreciation for a good play, a good piece of music, you know, a good piece of art. So we want to use those assets that we have also to bring these people to campus
Pradeep Khosla:And expose them to art of multiple cultures, art of multiple countries, ethnicities. And that way, we become a more holistic, integrated, society.
Grant Oliphant:So in that vein, say a little bit about why it was important to save the Depot to you.
Pradeep Khosla:The Depot to be was one more step into down in downtown. But in this case, it was already a location for the arts. It was a location for artists, for cross border artists that were practicing their craft there.
Pradeep Khosla:It was a location for performing plays. It was a location for people to meet and mingle and exchange ideas. And it was one of those things that if we did not come in, my fear was it would be taken over by some commercial enterprise, and it would be turned commercial. And because I had this interest in literally preserving cross border interactions, so I see San Diego, you know, I think of ourselves as like a bi national city.
Pradeep Khosla:I mean, I don't think of ourselves as a single nation city. Right? Yeah. This whole region, we all think of ourselves as a binational Yeah. So the Depot was actually a moniker that actually captured that.
Pradeep Khosla:So for me, it was important that somebody save it. It did did not have to be me, but it just turned out that nobody stepped up. So I said, okay. We'll take care of it. So I could afford it.
Grant Oliphant:I I love that you brought up the binational region. How important is that to your unique identity as a university?
Pradeep Khosla:I don't know if it's important to our unique identity as a university, but I think it's important to identity of San Diego. Right. Because we literally are living in a continuum out here. I mean, there might be a border dividing us technically, but it's literally a continuum of cultures.
Pradeep Khosla:It's a continuum of just about everything. I mean, a lot of products and services that we offer on this side of the border are actually created on that side of the border, and then they move back and forth.
Grant Oliphant:Right. Right. Yeah. So we're we're a living laboratory for the consequences of of various types of border policies.
Pradeep Khosla:Yeah. I think we really are. In fact, if you look at if you go south into Tijuana, you see a lot of American companies with presence like right there, like literally less than a mile from the border.
Grant Oliphant:Right. With materials, as you said, going back
Pradeep Khosla:going back and forth.
Grant Oliphant:You know, we've talked about various means of support for universities and and your university, the federal government's role. We haven't really talked about philanthropy. And I I I I want you to answer this question without saying anything nice about us.
Grant Oliphant:Because I don't I don't want this to be a self serving question about Prebys. But how important is the role of philanthropy in San Diego to the success of UCSD?
Pradeep Khosla:Actually, I think it's extremely important. Right? So philanthropy is not just foundations. Foundations just come about when somebody with significant means, passes away without having spent all the assets.
Pradeep Khosla:So that's what becomes a foundation. But during their lifetime, and you see this in San Diego, a lot of people with significant means invest on a daily basis in just about every institution in San Diego. So we have been the beneficiaries of philanthropists and their vision in multiple different ways, and I can I see ourselves as being very fortunate
Grant Oliphant:And having seen this in other communities, what strikes you about philanthropy here that is there is there anything unique or special about the philanthropy you encounter in San Diego?
Pradeep Khosla:Here, I have a special, how should I say, position in this community because of my role as chancellor. So I see it from a different level than I saw it before when I was in Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh, there are a lot of foundations. Here, we don't have that many foundations. But we have many, many philanthropists out here.
Pradeep Khosla:We have many individuals who have assets, who have resources that they wanna share with the broader community Right. To make us a better place, and they do it very generously. In Pittsburgh, I did not see that on the individual level. Not because it doesn't exist, just because I was not in a position to see that.
Pradeep Khosla:But on the other hand, I worked with the foundations a lot there, And they were very generous to us.
Grant Oliphant:It was a different system.
Pradeep Khosla:Right?
Grant Oliphant:Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Grant Oliphant:Exactly. Well, I am repeatedly struck by the liveliness of the philanthropic scene here in terms of individual donors like you just
Pradeep Khosla:In fact, out here, I see, like, the people I deal with, they see philanthropy as a responsibility. They see philanthropy as a calling. It's actually interesting, and that fundamentally changes the way they have conversations in terms of support and who they are supporting and why.
Pradeep Khosla:Yeah. They actually see it as a response, which I think is great.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. There are so many other issues we could explore. I I'm also aware that we're we've run out of time almost, and I
Pradeep Khosla:Did we spend did we talk that long?
Grant Oliphant:We we did, actually. But covered a lot of ground and and a lot of really good content, and I appreciate your willingness to be candid about the things that
Pradeep Khosla:Right. I just
Grant Oliphant:are happening.
Pradeep Khosla:Right. So but I before we finish, I wanna leave you with I think as we live in any country, there's ups and downs everywhere. But I can tell you on the average, there is no better country than this to live going forward because I see a lot of potential in the way we are building the economy, developing technology. I think, I think we might be going through a transient, but I'm very bullish on who we are, where we are headed. I'm bullish on higher education.
Pradeep Khosla:Again, who we are, where we are headed. In general, a very bullish person, even though I might be pessimistic every so often, but in general I
Grant Oliphant:I, no. I appreciate the long term view that you take, and I hope you're right about all of the those things. And I I think, absolutely, we we have to believe in in the direction the long term direction of the place that we call home.
Pradeep Khosla:Right. And this is home for me.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. And thank you for and thank you for your contributions to that. I which leads me to my final question, which is and I hate this question in a way because it it feels like it's a setup to to, you know, a person who's about to retire, which I hope is not the case.
Pradeep Khosla:Right.
Grant Oliphant:But it's the legacy question about when you think about what you hope will be your legacy and your role as chancellor, what what do you really want to be able to look back on when your time is done and say, during my time, we accomplished this set of things.
Pradeep Khosla:I think there will be a lot to enumerate. But conceptually, I would look back and say, during my time, we expanded access in ways that very few institutions did, and we made it affordable enough that very few institutions did in those those many ways. And, of course, the state has helped too. Don't get me wrong. But the expansion of access, the way we have done it, I can guarantee you there are hardly any institutions in the country that have expanded so fast while delivering the outcomes for individuals.
Grant Oliphant:Well, Pradeep, I I think you're obviously well on your way to to accomplish-
Pradeep Khosla:To retirement.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. No. No. No.
Grant Oliphant:Let's hope not. I, you know, I I I really do. You know, I I I will say this that I think regions are defined by the caliber of the leaders that they have in place, and we're very fortunate as a region to have you heading UCSD. And I don't say that just because you're a friend, but because you are making a material difference in the role of the university.
Pradeep Khosla:I appreciate that, but I can tell you I'm fortunate to be in San Diego because the community here is so supportive. And I have been fortunate to have such a supportive community. Even when I've made some mistakes, they've been behind the institution, behind me. So Alright.
Pradeep Khosla:Thank you, everybody, who's listening.
Grant Oliphant:Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Grant Oliphant:Alright. Well, what'd you think?
Crystal Page:I appreciate how big UC San Diego is in terms of like all the things it does and all it is to the community.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. Well, I think I think for people in San Diego, it may be surprising to hear that what the building program that that university has embarked upon is the largest housing program or will be the largest housing program in the country. And and why not in a community where there is housing scarcity and where that's so important in terms of reflecting the growth of the institution. For me, that was maybe the best entry point into understanding the vision that Pradeep was laying out, which was about making this very valuable education more broadly available to more people. I I thought that was a wonderful part of what we talked about.
Crystal Page:Yeah. And when you two discussed his attendance at IIT, you know, I guess I would expect someone who went to an elite, very exclusive school not to wanna open doors for for other folks, and and he's clearly the opposite. You know? The more the merrier, because that makes us all more capable to serve in society, you know.
Grant Oliphant:I I think that was important on on on a couple of levels. You know, first of all, his framing of it is we wanna be an elite institution, but not an elitist institution. That was so good.
Crystal Page:Yeah. Sorry. I'm snapping because I agree with you.
Grant Oliphant:No. I got it. I got it. Okay. And I, you know, I think it just it it just is the right goal for particularly a public university.
Grant Oliphant:But as we're watching the national debate play out around higher ed and and the pressures coming out of the administration on higher ed, I think part of the cultural flashpoint has been about how people perceive the role of these institutions in their communities. And what he's saying is, yeah, we wanna be elite in the sense that we're providing a first rate education and a first rate set of experiences, but we want it to be available to more and more people. Right. He he referred at one point, and I came back to it, about, you know, to this idea of you can't measure how good you are based on how scarce you make your product. You should be measuring how good you are based on how broadly available you make and how many people you include in that.
Grant Oliphant:I thought that was both a lovely framing and kind of an important distinction, you know, as we as we think through what education ought to look like.
Crystal Page:Yeah. Well, and to be a public university and say you want the community to feel like they they own or participate in or connected with you, that is what an asset should be. It shouldn't be more scarce. That's what he said. It should be available and connected.
Crystal Page:Even if you don't have a college degree, he talked about, you know, people who maybe can appreciate a good play or a good song. And and that's right. Offering education in so many different forms to everyone in the neighborhood, I think just adds quality to our society and our connections.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. It's funny. I I was pressing hard on the on the scientific research piece at the front end, partly because that is so important to the economic future of this region. And when I think about American leadership in the world and curing disease, and by the way, that's one of the areas that Prebys cares about. Of course, that that matters to us.
Grant Oliphant:But I loved how he came back to but education is that and it's about education. Yeah. And that touches on a lot of things.
Crystal Page:Yeah. Yeah. Off of that too, it struck me when you two discussed the difference in education for skill versus, I guess what I'd say, how to live a good life. And I appreciate that he he wants to be able to offer both of those things because I think depending on when you went to school, some of us learned all the skills, but it's like, now how do I human? Right?
Crystal Page:And he's trying to bring both of those things to the table.
Grant Oliphant:That's so nicely said, and and I really appreciated that answer from him when I was pushing him on philosophy About, you know, what is education for? The the the notion that it really should be about how to deal with life in this moment and be productive and and be prepared, but also, like you just said, how to how to human And and how to be a good member of society, still important, still part of the education Right. Just approached differently. Which is I I I think it helps underscore and explain why the university has placed under his leadership such an emphasis on the arts. And I think we're delighted that we whenever we get to work with UCSD on an arts agenda because they bring a scale to it that is valuable, to the work. And, and it is it is nice to see in this era of of STEM everything that the arts and the what I think of as the human side still matters.
Crystal Page:Yeah. Well and I know we've had some people who talk about STEM, and then there's the STEAM Right. Which includes the arts. But I think you're right. I think it makes me think about you know, I, of course, signed up for a humanities education because I like all the the writing, reading, and philosophy.
Crystal Page:But, I think he's talking about a whole human. When I think about, you know, the kind of society we want to vote and engage, we want people who understand art and think and can stop and celebrate resources, but can also do some math. Not all the math, but some of the math, you know?
Grant Oliphant:So Right.
Crystal Page:It's a it's great.
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. A couple of other things I appreciated about the interview. I appreciated that he talked about the importance of listening to community even in a role where I think sometimes heads of major institutions and universities in particular don't think of their community as broadly as he did when he came in. So that's important. I think it I I think there's an important lesson there generally for anybody coming into a community in a new role, to spend some time thinking about the broader community and what it needs out of this August institution that is in its midst.
Grant Oliphant:I appreciated that he was willing to talk about how it is to lead in uncertain times. Mhmm. And I I I think he painted a nice picture for us of what it is like to lead in a in a period where the rules keep changing
Crystal Page:Right.
Grant Oliphant:And where you don't know what tomorrow will bring. You know, I think as we as we really engaged on the issue of some of the edicts coming out of Washington right now, he was appropriately careful in responding to those. But I think I I appreciated that he was candid about the fact that it is hard Mhmm. And that you have to adapt to the environment you're operating in and take a longer view.
Crystal Page:Right. Yeah. I think even his understanding in that same vein around, for example, public transportation. I didn't know that I have a lot of friends and family who went to UC San Diego, and they always talked about, yeah, that train will happen someday, the trolley. It'll go
Grant Oliphant:there. Right.
Crystal Page:And I didn't realize that's how it ended up at SDSU. But, the fact that this chancellor is able to see, you know, how do we make it a place that more people want to come and feel connected and the pivoting to understand it seems like he's, like you said, playing that long game, but having the view that if not right now, like you said, if there's more buildings we need to build, you know, we'll hold off for now and, and build ones appropriate. So I think, I think some people forget that, you know, these types of leaders are thinking deeply about what is needed now. What am I planting for the future? And I think I mean, this is the UC system is technically part of government, and and you see that they're thoughtful, and they're trying to use their resources well.
Crystal Page:And and I would want people to remember that. You know?
Grant Oliphant:Yeah. Actually, that I I'm so glad you brought that up because the the trolley is probably a perfect metaphor for much of what we spoke about. And I I think it's it's really important to acknowledge this is, you know, higher ed in America right now is one of the flash points in our society. It's hard to lead an institution like that, period. And we're dealing with all kinds of policy uncertainty coming out of Washington.
Grant Oliphant:And some of it, in my opinion, really terribly misguided with respect to the role of these institutions and the global leading research that they do and the the way the role they play in setting America apart. All of that said, what he is, and the university have really focused on is this broader vision of how they stay connected with everyone and make sure that the, you know, those those doors of connection and opportunity are wide and not narrowed. And again, it comes back to this philosophy of abundance versus scarcity.
Crystal Page:Right.
Grant Oliphant:That for me is gonna be a takeaway that I'm I'm gonna sit with for a while because I
Crystal Page:Me too.
Grant Oliphant:I think it is a good way to think about how we how we respond to some of what we're seeing.
Crystal Page:Yeah. I mean, the Tridents play an important role in San Diego County as as the mascot of UC San Diego. Mhmm. So I think we should close out by saying maybe go Tritons. Are you ready?
Grant Oliphant:Alright.
Crystal Page:Okay. One two three. Go Tritons.
Grant Oliphant:This is a production of the Previs Foundation.
Crystal Page:Hosted by Grant Oliphant.
Grant Oliphant:Co hosted by Crystal Page.
Crystal Page:Co produced by Crystal Page and Adam Greenfield.
Grant Oliphant:Engineered by Adam Greenfield.
Crystal Page:Production coordination by Tess Karesky.
Grant Oliphant:Video production by Edgar Ontiveros Medina.
Crystal Page:Special thanks to the Prebys Foundation team.
Grant Oliphant:The Stop and Talk theme song was created by San Diego's own Mr. Lyrical Groove.
Crystal Page:Download episodes at your favorite podcatcher or visit us at Prebys FDN dot org.
