Well, hello again, everybody.

This is Albert Chang coming at you with a brand new episode of The Learning Curve podcast.

And this week, I'm joined by Justice Barry Anderson.

Justice Anderson, welcome back to the show.

I'm delighted to be here for those who might not be up on my history. I served in the Minnesota Supreme Court for 19 years,

recently retired, actually retired in 2024. And I'm delighted to be joining you today to be talking

about, among other topics, Alexander Hamilton. That's right. And I'm not going to make you sing, Justice Anderson, but I'm looking

forward to this show, too. Our audience will be pleased to hear that.

We're going to have Professor Willard Stern Randall join us.

But before we get to Alexander Hamilton and Professor Randall, let's talk some education

news, Justice Anderson.

So what did you find? I'd like to discuss an interesting article that appeared in the real clear

education blog by Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt. College is facing widespread closures.

There are a couple interesting things about this lengthy and thorough piece.

One is that we've been discussing for some time the issues relating to declining numbers of students and some concerns about cost of higher education and its effectiveness

driving down student enrollments.

And the predicted apocalypse hasn't yet arrived, but it does appear to be on the horizon.

And they are noting in this piece that about one college is closing or merging every week,

and the expectation is 20 to 25 percent of institutions will merge or close within the next

several years.

And what they discuss here is what are institutions doing to

face these challenges? And they discuss a variety of innovative approaches, focusing on more job-related

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