Hi, this is Steve Levitt. At the end of this episode, we are making an important announcement

about the future of the podcast. So if you are a regular listener, I encourage you to stick

around to the end. But first, we've got today's brand new episode. It's a huge accomplishment

to win an award for being the most innovative in your industry.

Imagine winning that prize two years in a row.

Three straight years?

How about 11 years running?

That incredibly is what today's guest, Michael Crow, has done as president of Arizona State University.

We compressed a couple hundred years of university evolution into 20 years.

Therefore, rather than taking 200 years or 300 years to build Harvard, we're taking 20 years to build this new ASU,

and this new ASU can then be this new class of institution moving forward.

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

Arizona State University, also known as ASU, has not always attracted national accolades.

Back in 2002, when Michael Crowe became president, ASU was a pretty mediocre university on a

broad range of metrics, although it did have a strong national reputation on one particular

dimension. In that year, 2002, Playboy magazine named ASU

the number one party school in the nation.

So I started our conversation by asking Michael,

who held a top job at Columbia University,

one of the most prestigious schools in the U.S.,

why he would leave that job to run a struggling party school?

I don't know that I exactly agree with the characterization, but nonetheless, it's a fair question.

...