President of University of Southern California (USC) Carol Folt on resolving issues at USC, enhancing diversity on campus and what it means for Indian students to be in American universities. The session was moderated by Ritika Chopra, Chief of the National Bureau (Govt) and National Education Editor, The Indian Express

Ritika Chopra: Firstly, what brings you to India.

USC has about 47,000 students, 500,000-plus alumni, from 151 countries. It has one of the largest international student populations among the research universities in America. So, at the core of what we do is to maintain that global perspective… We are the third largest in terms of numbers of students from India, close to 2,500-2,700, both in undergraduate and graduate programmes. We’ve gone up about 35 per cent, in the number of Indian students. We wanted to come here to make a two-way expressway. We want to be the leading place on the West Coast of America, for people from Asia and India to partner at our institution.

When I was head of the Association of American Universities (AAU), we developed a partnership relationship with Prime Minister Modi and President Biden. The AAU gave a big push so that more American universities could develop a bigger pipeline of students, ideas and technology… India is the big opportunity place in the world right now, where people are looking with more optimism than other places.

Ritika Chopra: What was the experience of resolving issues at USC after news about the Varsity Blues scandal broke?

They announced Varsity Blues on the morning that I was actually selected for USC presidency. I did what you always need to do — run towards it… We built a culture commission for the university that had staff, faculty and students set up new guiding principles: What do we believe in? Who are we? How do we do more? You need to include your community in the solution or else it won’t persist.

Ritika Chopra: How did you plug the loopholes?

We created a real report. Every single scandal or issue we’ve been through, we posted everything on our website, because that’s how you restore trust. In one particular case, it was something very simple: Coaches would put through names of people that they wanted to potentially get varsity fellowships. Then the university would decide if they pass the admissions. But no one was checking back to see if the same people were being accepted. Nothing ever came back… USC wasn’t actually doing any of it. But, it looked like we weren’t keeping people accountable. In fact, the students that were coming in were never even playing sports, so most of the coaches, except for a few that were part of it, didn’t even know about it… To do it right, you need to start at the beginning of the process and check every single step, and ask, have we tightened? Have we put things in place?

We have several programmes that are run by people who are Republicans and Democrats in the public sphere… We’re making it possible for students to learn across political differences

Anant Goenka: Did it impact applications?

It didn’t, they continued to go up. It hurt alumni. Many felt very distressed. I think what was really helpful is that we went out right away, we said exactly what we were doing and made changes fast… The first initiative I did was to make the tuition free at USC for anyone from a family under $80,000. I wanted to make clear that we really wanted students from all walks of life, and we didn’t want financial pressures to keep them from coming.

Anant Goenka: And is that the same for international students?

It’s not the same, it is different. We don’t give financial aid to international students. I would love to. That’s part of my dream, to develop the sources of funding to do that.

Anant Goenka: Should colleges be places of protest?

I think that colleges are the places where some of the most important issues get decided and tested. People learn to stand up for what they really believe in. I think that’s a place where you make big changes in swings, you can believe one thing one day and then you test out something else. You don’t have to be the same the day you started. But, that is where the real problem is now. We have become so polarised, now, there’s only one answer or the other. And I think a lot of what we’re trying to teach students is not be incompatible with protest or with advocacy. It’s in learning to do it in a way that you can coexist with people.

Colleges are the places where some of the most important issues get decided and tested. You can believe one thing one day and then test out something else another day. You don’t have to be the same the day you started

Anant Goenka: There is a view that most colleges in America have a strong liberal bias. We talk about diversity, but is that something that needs to be addressed?

I don’t think anyone has a political litmus test. I’m not going to go out and hire someone or not hire them, by asking them who they voted for… In a school like ours, we’re 22 schools, 18,000 undergraduates and 25,000 graduate students. It’s a very different world. At USC, they have a different sense of community. They tend to think about jobs and respect for the workplace. So, we don’t see this battle.

We have several programmes that are run by people who are Republicans and Democrats in the public sphere… We just got a new campus in DC, because we want our students exposed not just to California culture, but to what takes place in the government and in DC. We’re making it possible for students to learn across political differences. That’s just another form of diversity that we should be very intentional about encouraging.

Ritika Chopra: Should higher education institutions weigh in on the controversies of the day?

One of the main jobs of a president of a university is that we have to hold the centre. My job is not to tell you what I personally think about a political candidate or things like that. Mine is to make a place that allows other people to speak about what they care. You hold the centre, so that all voices can be heard. I think that’s an absolute principle. On the other hand, we should comment on things that have to do with education. And, in our areas of importance, we should be taking a moral stance. I think it’s very different, where you might weigh in.

When students learn the ability to work across disciplines and try things that might not be the ones that are immediately identified with a current job, that’s their biggest learning from the American education system

Anant Goenka: Since you’ve come out of the varsity blues scandal, what advice would you give the new president of Harvard?

I would say the first thing that the president needs to do is get a lot of voices. You need to understand the difference between trying to talk in a legal way and trying to talk in a human way… You have to just be aware of it. And you better be ready to sometimes say I don’t know the answer.

Anant Goenka: But this issue isn’t dying down anytime soon. Today, if there was a pro-Israeli protest and one sympathetic to the Palestinian cause on the USC campus, how would you navigate that?

My guiding principle is safety first. If we can keep you safe, we’re going to do it. We work with people before it happens. One day, some of our Jewish students put up pictures of all the hostages for five hours near Tommy Trojan (sculpture). They were there talking to people, they had flags and balloons. People went by respectfully. The next day, a group set up pictures of the people who were killed in Gaza. They sat there for hours right in the same place, and people went by. This doesn’t mean students aren’t still anxious. But, we’ve increased security, increased mental health, and made sure that where they need to be able to speak, we do our best to protect them.

Neeti Nigam: Most Indians going to US universities have jobs in mind but amid the Covid recession, layoffs are happening, especially in US companies. Do you still think this is the right time for Indians to go abroad?

At USC, we have an enormously successful placement rate. Our engineers are all getting jobs. It depends, to some extent, on the school they went to and the specialty they did. We have lots of hybrid degrees, which is what I think gets students jobs. So, they can get an engineering degree, and pair it with a business degree and those students get the best jobs anywhere in the world. It was the cinematic art school, that went together with the engineering school and created the world’s first gaming programme. I think it’s a great time for Indian students to come to USC because they develop connections in these industries that are global. I think countries that have people who are deeply globally connected in business, industry and health are a real asset.

Neeti Nigam: What skills do Indian students abroad have that is their stronghold? 

The Indian students we have are fantastic. They’re hardworking and come through an amazing system. Usually, they are very entrepreneurial, which means that they’re willing to try different things. The students who are self-selected already make that big leap. They are kind of fearless… The biggest asset is that they learn in our system which is multidisciplinary, the new word is multi-hyphenate. When they learn the ability to work across disciplines and try things that might not be the ones that are immediately identified with a current job, that’s the biggest learning… American education systems are very chaotic. We aren’t hierarchic or as linear and there are a lot of jumps. I do think that’s one of the greatest things we offer students.

R Radhika: Regarding the student debt crisis, what are your thoughts on the Biden-Harris administration’s plan?

The only thing I know is they are trying to reimburse people who had debt. That’s different than trying to get the prices low to have the support for students so more and more students can come. I support that. They’ve also been trying to increase community colleges. I’m a real supporter of that. Community colleges are less expensive… It’s what I did. I went to community college in California and worked as a waitress at the pier in Santa Barbara. So, when I went to UC Santa Barbara, I’d already saved a lot of money. But right now, I don’t think we have a countrywide plan to really address that lack of affordability. I think it’s being addressed state by state, school by school.

R Radhika: USC has been able to implement AI in scholarly and creative work. What kind of framework is essential to regulate it and use it to its full potential? 

There are different levels of regulation. Our students were already using Chat GPT, when it was first introduced. So, our faculty did a series of workshops. The general philosophy was that we would not try to regulate it. Within the university, we built a centre to work on it. In the arts, people have been involved in trying to understand what is the boundary between using people’s work and generating new work. We’re trying to be part of the national conversation as they develop these frontline decisions. It’s going to take us a long time to know the final answer. But I think the whole point is not to be afraid of it.

Vandita Mishra: The world over, we see a distrust in institutions, which is taking a toll in terms of politics and the rise of populism. In that larger setting, what is the challenge for the university?

We start with people that we have — are our students feeling that? If a university is a place where they can come, explore things that really matter to them, develop lifelong friendships, it is the single best way to help them stay connected and find their way through that disengagement. That’s what we do every day. I think the move to also incorporate wellness — we do a lot of work so that students are told it’s not just about class, it’s about developing yourself as a whole person. We talk a lot about ways that they can serve in communities… The best way to feel disenfranchised and cynical is to feel like you can’t do something… When you get them out of the distant-book phase to the hands-on phase, you start building trust, and that helps fight cynicism… A lot of our programmes are in schools in downtown LA, with young children. And we do programmes in prisons. We try to get out and be in every walk of life, even if they not necessarily going to university, but they could transfer there.

Ritika Chopra: Post the US Supreme Court’s position on affirmative action, how has USC tried to tweak its approach to ensure diversity? 

I do think universities benefit by having inclusive environments where people can be successful. So that’s what we do. Our admissions officers go out to every neighbourhood, spend time trying to develop an applicant pool of people from all walks of life.

Ritika Chopra: There’s a view that standardised tests like SAT and ACT reward students of privileged backgrounds. Have you seen a difference in the student body composition after you’ve made the two tests optional?

No, it hasn’t made any difference. A lot of students still submit them. Some pretty good papers show that there are biases. There are also pretty good papers that show if you just take one class, you can eliminate that. It’s like a 50-point spread by taking a class. A lot of universities have tried to do a lot more education and give people classes so they can learn how to take those tests. It gets kind of crazy when you’re teaching people to take a test. It’s one vehicle, but for USC, it has never been the metric of choice. It’s just 25 or 30 different things they look at… The single biggest difference was when we made tuition free at USC for anyone from a family under $80,000. We got a lot more applications from people from low-income and from all walks of life. That was a big surge.

Ritika Chopra: Did this surge also lead to a larger number of candidates from those walks of life getting selected?

We don’t go around that way, pulling out who got selected and who didn’t. But our diversity is as high as it’s ever been. Since I’ve taken over, applications have gone from 70,000 to 80,000 to 100,000. Once you take the test away, you don’t have a way to know if your class is different than it was before, because that whole metric is gone. But we look at GPA and other things… Interestingly, more than half of our students still send the test scores in. We don’t tell them that they have to, we make these decisions independent of that test.

Ritika Chopra: If say a donor or a CEO of a certain company said that I wouldn’t donate or I wouldn’t hire a candidate based on a protest they participated in, how would you handle the situation?

I would say very clearly, I’m sorry, you feel that way. Would you like to talk about it? If they persist, I would say, well, that’s your choice. But I think a university has to continue to do what it believes is the right thing to do.

Ritika Chopra: You’re the first woman president of USC. Could you take us through your experience of navigating gendered institutions?

I’m a woman in science, and things have changed radically since I’ve been in university. For women in science, one of the most important things we wanted to do was make it easier for the people who followed us. I spend a lot of time on mentoring programmes… Ever since I’ve been at the AAU, every year, the number of women presidents is going up.

I think we’ll start seeing differences in the people who choose to stay as leaders because people sort of self-select. I think we’re going to see more women, people of colour and people from different backgrounds. You’re also going to see more people in American universities who aren’t necessarily academics also running a university.