College Is Broken: Podcast Edition

About College Is Broken: Podcast Edition

College admissions is broken, and Teege Mettille helped break it. After twenty years inside colleges, he wrote the book on what went wrong. Sundays: the audiobook, chapter by chapter. Thursdays: conversations with the counselors, deans, students, and parents who lived it. September through December.

Publisher

Teege Mettille

Category

education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

25 Aug 2026

Latest episode

25 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

18 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   25 Oct 2026

   Interlude: The Price

   College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon) The Admissions Counselor Malaise (https://a.co/d/0gNWNPfk) (on Amazon) Ten Moves To Rebuild Your Admissions Team (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FB_sFTEz_QwRLWzV1IwEK8BXP1hT6a-Z/view) The pricing interlude from College Is Broken, read by the author. Three numbers, none of which match, and the argument that the discount rate is not an access strategy but a psychological one that has been quietly training the public not to believe us. Key takeaways What the sticker price is engineered to produce Access to students versus access for students Who the model reliably works for

2. 

   22 Oct 2026

   Jeremy Thompson on Policymakers

   College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon) The Signal Solution (https://a.co/d/09BKEj6E) (on Amazon) The Malaise Diagnostic (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aL8BL3I4rPFKwHvwbM4viU4YjAFzxkb2/view) Jeremy Thompson is vice president for marketing, communications and public affairs at the College of the Holy Cross, where he's been about four years after two decades in higher ed marketing and, before that, arts administration. He sits in the seat that has to translate all of this to the public, which makes him the right person to talk to about a chapter that argues higher ed lost the funding because it lost the trust. He agreed the sector can't fix this at the edges, then told me what the chapter leaves out. Rising cost isn't just a response to aid dollars. It's personnel in an institution that is 70 percent people, with health insurance costs up more than half over a decade. And it's decades of unfunded mandates producing the exact administrative footprint we get accused of. He also pushed back on my framing that everyone here is acting in good faith, which is fair. Not everyone is. Then he took the conversation somewhere I didn't expect, into the malaise interlude and the argument that we've been asking admissions counselors to be marketers instead of letting the marketers market. Key takeaways Whether ROI framing is a trap or a necessity for first-gen families Unfunded mandates and the administrative bloat we get blamed for Why "your counselors are your sales team" falls apart on contact with a job posting Jeremy Thompson (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyathompson/) on LinkedIn

3. 

   18 Oct 2026

   Policymakers

   College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (Amazon) The Signal Driven Playbook (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o4WuOEpM723o2PtLhwl_qIt717B_TkEI/view) The policymakers chapter of College Is Broken, read by the author. I open by admitting I'm no fan of Reagan and then spend the rest of the chapter arguing that the private benefit reframe worked because higher ed handed it over, including the lobbying talking point I personally used on Capitol Hill. Key takeaways Where the private benefit reframe actually started What the EFC was built to do, and what families thought it did Pell as a voucher system higher ed won't call one

4. 

   15 Oct 2026

   Betsy Klene on Rankings

   College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon) Stop Chasing Comfort Metrics (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lwfNNNI2QWEz5xFmEY_d0sUxOn-NNyK6/view) Stop Waiting (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UtthnEsQBOJ7KuLqdEXhL9SstOC41qr1/view) Betsy Klene spent ten years at IBM, did a stint as a radio announcer on a financial station in Los Angeles, lived in Singapore where spouses weren't permitted to work, and backed into college advising by helping her own three kids and then half of La Jolla. She came into the profession before U.S. News was the thing everyone organized around, which means she watched the whole arc rather than inheriting the end of it. She pushed back on me in two places. She thinks the book is too hard on parents, who in her experience take days off work, go to the night sessions, and show up already having done more homework than I gave them credit for. And she thinks I'm behind on prestige. Her last five years of students were picking Purdue and Georgia Tech over the sweatshirt schools, including one who got into Harvard and chose UT Austin because the program was better. We agreed on more than we disagreed, which is the risk with a rankings chapter. Everyone already thinks rankings are bad. Nobody stops submitting the data. Key takeaways Whether parents deserve more credit than the book gives them Why prestige is losing ground to program fit and value What a college's career center reveals about the institution Links Betsy Klene (https://www.linkedin.com/in/betsy-klene-3aa680b1/) on LinkedIn HECA (https://www.hecalive.org/)(Higher Education Consultants Association) — The Admissions Directors Lunchcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-admissions-directors-lunchcast/id1559505568)

5. 

   11 Oct 2026

   Rankings

   College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon) The Signal Driven Playbook (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o4WuOEpM723o2PtLhwl_qIt717B_TkEI/view) The rankings chapter of College Is Broken, read by the author. The argument is not that U.S. News built a bad formula. It's that colleges spent decades making themselves indistinguishable from each other, and the rankings showed up with a product to sell into the confusion we created. Key takeaways Why the sea of sameness came before the rankings, not after What colleges actually bought when they spent on amenities Whether opting out is unilateral disarmament or an overdue question

6. 

   8 Oct 2026

   Ken Cutts on Enrollment

   College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon) The Signal Solution (https://a.co/d/09BKEj6E) (on Amazon) The Circular Firing Squad (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kzYWfpTRu5Wce3MJ5NVhgxXmW5EbcjmN/view) Ken Cutts is a first-generation student from Milwaukee who spent eighteen years working out how the machine runs, roughly four of them on the vendor side with higher ed as the client. He is now Director of Marketing for Degree Programs at Columbia Business School. He points out early that he is a safe person to have this conversation with, since he is not an enrollment leader and nobody's discount rate is his to defend, which is exactly why he can say some of this out loud. He would not call it disagreement so much as what is missing, and the gap he named is money. The public sees a sticker price times a headcount and cannot understand why the college claims to be broke, and nobody inside is explaining where the money actually goes or does not go. From there we ended up on vendors as institutional memory, the fact that we built the entire funnel around what a vendor can track and monetize rather than what indicates a student is actually interested, and the new state surveillance pricing laws that may end up describing financial aid leveraging whether or not anyone in a state capitol has noticed yet. I also went further on for-profit colleges than I probably should have, and Ken let me. His own contribution is a piece of advice from a former boss about embracing your nemesis, which sounds like nonsense until he unpacks it. Key takeaways Where the money in higher ed actually sits, and why the public cannot see it Surveillance pricing law as an external forcing function on discounting Why the metrics we optimize are the ones a vendor can bill for Links Ken Cutts (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kencutts/) on LinkedIn The Admissions Directors Lunchcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/working-your-admit-pool/id1699849881?i=1000622683607) episode with Brian Troyer: [link needed] New Jersey Fair Price Protection Act (https://www.nj.gov/governor/news/2026/20260723a.shtml), signed July 23, 2026 House Judiciary Committee inquiry (https://judiciary.house.gov/media/in-the-news/republicans-demand-information-firms-help-set-college-prices) into tuition price fixing.

7. 

   4 Oct 2026

   Enrollment

   College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon) Ten Moves To Rebuild Your Admissions Team (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FB_sFTEz_QwRLWzV1IwEK8BXP1hT6a-Z/view) The enrollment chapter of College Is Broken, read by the author. This is the one where the indictment includes me. Discounting from Robin Hood to house of cards, what the scholarship letter is actually engineered to do, why the enrollment manager who tells the president the truth gets replaced by someone who won't, and the bacon problem. Key takeaways The factory farm comparison, applied to enrollment ethics What a scholarship letter is engineered to produce, and it is not affordability Who actually invented discounting, search campaigns, and application bloat

8. 

   1 Oct 2026

   Carole Chabries on Faculty

   College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon): Small College Consulting (https://www.smallcollegeconsulting.com/) National Small College Conference (https://smallcollegeconference.com/) Carole Chabries has three degrees in English literature, got the PhD fully intending to be a professor, and figured out in graduate school that she did not want the job. She spent 25 years in academic affairs instead, ending as vice provost at Carroll, which is where she and I were colleagues. She is also an HLC peer reviewer and team lead, which means she walks onto campuses she knows nothing about and watches every single one of them explain how it is unique. She now runs Third Rail Leadership. She did not disagree with much, which she is upfront about, so the useful part is where she pushes past me. My chapter frames the gap as enrollment selling job outcomes while faculty deliver formation. Her version is that both sides are talking to themselves and the actual gap is the student, whose real problem nobody has asked about. She got there by learning sales when she started her consultancy, discovering she had never once in academic affairs asked what pain the person in front of her was trying to relieve. We also got into why this is close to impossible for an adjunct teaching five hours a week, why faculty get drafted into recruiting with no preparation for it, and why nobody in a leadership meeting has ever asked whether the committee they are staffing is eating someone's teaching time. Her answer on that one was that calling it accidental was generous. Key takeaways Excavating what the student is actually trying to solve, underneath the job Why the adjunct model makes the case for the curriculum nearly impossible to make The generational shift in what being a faculty member even is Links Carole Chabries (https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolechabries) on LinkedIn Third Rail Leadership (https://thirdrailleadership.com/) The Leadership LiveWire newsletter (https://thirdrailleadership.com/subscribe)

9. 

   27 Sept 2026

   Faculty

   College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) ( on Amazon) The Signal Solution (https://a.co/d/09BKEj6E) (on Amazon) The Signal Driven Playbook (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o4WuOEpM723o2PtLhwl_qIt717B_TkEI/view) The faculty chapter of College Is Broken, read by the author. The one where I side with the faculty and then explain why that is not the compliment it sounds like. Includes the original deal, the moment the pitch shifted to lifetime earnings while the product stayed the same, and the kitchen conversation about British literature that ends up doing more damage than any student loan statement. Key takeaways Why the pitch changed for first-generation families and the curriculum did not The kitchen conversation as the place trust actually breaks What it costs when no president decides between the first job and the whole career

10. 

    24 Sept 2026

    Jaime Hunt on The Water

    College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon): The Circular Firing Squad (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kzYWfpTRu5Wce3MJ5NVhgxXmW5EbcjmN/view) Jaime Hunt spent 22 years in higher ed marketing, nine of them as a cabinet-level CMO at Old Dominion, Miami, and Winston-Salem State, before launching Solve Higher Ed Marketing in 2024. She also teaches the graduate higher ed marketing course at West Virginia University, which means she gets to watch the next round of people learn the water while they're still standing outside it. She is candid about her own position in the story, including the part where the administrative bloat everyone complains about includes jobs like the one she held. Her pushback was on persistence versus retention. She agrees the language flipped, but she does not want to hand the responsibility back to the student, and she thinks retention pressure can just as easily push a campus toward admitting the right students instead of lowering the bar. We got into whether the fix is bringing in outsiders who have never worked in higher ed, why the early career admissions counselor is treated as a consumable, and what happens if you measure a counselor on the graduation rate of the cohort they recruited four years ago. Also a brief detour into presidents who believe their campus is the best kept secret, which it never is. Key takeaways Whether retention pressure lowers the bar or sharpens fit The case for hiring expertise from outside higher ed entirely Measuring admissions counselors on graduation rather than census Links Jaime Hunt (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimehunt/) on LinkedIn Solve Higher Ed (https://www.solvehighered.com/) Heart Over Hype: Transforming Higher Ed Marketing with Empathy ( https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Over-Hype-Transforming-Marketing/dp/B0DZ4NPCFR) Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO (https://www.enrollify.org/podcasts/higheredcmo) Podcast (Enrollify)

11. 

    20 Sept 2026

    Interlude: The Water

    College Is Broken: Print Edition⁠ (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon) Stop Chasing Comfort Metrics (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lwfNNNI2QWEz5xFmEY_d0sUxOn-NNyK6/view) Interlude: The Water, from College Is Broken, read by the author. The one with no villain in it. Clark Kerr's public good premise quietly dissolving, Kenneth Mason at Quaker Oats warning that profit is to a business what eating is to life, Mark Salisbury on why the language flipped from persistence to retention and what that flip gave institutions permission to do. Key takeaways Why drift is harder to write about than corruption What changed when the student stopped being the one who persists Why the people inside a system are the worst positioned to describe it

12. 

    17 Sept 2026

    Thom Chesney on Presidents

    College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon) The Signal Solution (https://a.co/d/09BKEj6E) (on Amazon) The Circular Firing Squad (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kzYWfpTRu5Wce3MJ5NVhgxXmW5EbcjmN/view) Thom Chesney has done this three times: Brookhaven College in Dallas, Clarke University in Dubuque, and now Southwestern College in Santa Fe, a graduate school in counseling and art therapy. Three very different institutions, three very different boards, about thirteen years in the chair. He's also quoted in this chapter, which made him the obvious person to argue with about it. He doesn't say I got the presidents chapter wrong. He says I didn't push hard enough, and then offers his own upgrade: higher ed has a gambling addiction, the kind where the machine pays you back eighty cents often enough to keep you feeding it. We get into who sets the topics for institutional storytelling, why "we just need to tell our story better" survives every board meeting, the college that geofenced with postcards and won, what presidents actually say to each other about being the Harvard of their state, and his case that every campus needs a reliable source of truth serum. Also a board member who wanted to know why students stopped coming from Chicago on a train that stopped running in 1981. Three key takeaways: Higher ed as gambling addiction, not just delusion Claiming your actual geography instead of manufactured uniqueness Hiring to transparency so there are no presidential surprises Links: Thom Chesney (https://www.linkedin.com/in/thom-d-chesney-0109276) on LinkedIn Southwestern College (https://www.swc.edu/)

13. 

    13 Sept 2026

    Presidents

    College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon) The Signal Solution (https://a.co/d/09BKEj6E)(on Amazon) Stop Chasing Comfort Metrics (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lwfNNNI2QWEz5xFmEY_d0sUxOn-NNyK6/view) Chapter One of College Is Broken, read by the author. Presidents and boards, the Harvard-of-wherever problem, what a 56.3 percent discount rate is actually telling you, and why the crack is easier to talk around than to treat. Three key takeaways: The machinery that protects presidents from what they need to hear The discount rate as market feedback, not a lever Why viewbook language establishes normalcy, not exceptionalism

14. 

    10 Sept 2026

    Dr. Jay Keehn on Introduction

    College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon) The Admissions Counselor Malaise (https://a.co/d/0gNWNPfk) (on Amazon) The Malaise Diagnostic (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aL8BL3I4rPFKwHvwbM4viU4YjAFzxkb2/view) Dr. Jay Keehn was dean of students at a national university that closed underneath him. He now hosts College Closures, Mergers, and Acquisitions and runs THE CLUB, a monthly gathering of higher ed leaders that started as one guy posting a Zoom link on LinkedIn hoping to meet people. His read on the Introduction is that the stakeholder-by-stakeholder structure is the right call, because people are impacted differently and informed differently. What he thinks is missing is the emotional bridge: the student who researched five colleges, chose one, and lost it eighteen months later with seventy credits and nowhere to put them. We get into the red flags nobody outside the cabinet can see, a bakery in Gaffney, South Carolina that lost a quarter of its business when Limestone closed, why boards often don't know what questions to ask, and his unproven theory about a president running out the clock on a contract. Three key takeaways: Closure as a human event, not an administrative one Why presidents can see the crisis and still say "not us" Board composition as a structural problem, not a villain Links: Dr. Jay Keehn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaykeehn/) on LinkedIn (message him to join THE CLUB) College Closures, Mergers, and Acquisitions (https://open.spotify.com/show/3tNtDmgwjwRWUzAf7ujRYc) podcast

15. 

    6 Sept 2026

    Introduction

    College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://a.co/d/023TiIRb) (on Amazon) Stop Waiting (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UtthnEsQBOJ7KuLqdEXhL9SstOC41qr1/view) The Introduction to College Is Broken, read by the author. Nick at 18, the $16,000 and the parent PLUS loan nobody explained, why the education still works even though the trust doesn't, and the circular firing squad that organizes the rest of the book. Three key takeaways: What "broken" means here, and what it doesn't The gap between belief in college and confidence in colleges Why the author doesn't exempt himself

16. 

    3 Sept 2026

    Don't Say It with John McGreal

    ⁠⁠College Is Broken: Print Edition⁠⁠ (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon) ⁠Stop Waiting ⁠ (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UtthnEsQBOJ7KuLqdEXhL9SstOC41qr1/view) John McGreal has been in enrollment management about fifteen years, across two regional privates, a two-year school, a health science institution, and a state flagship, and he is currently at Ripon. He is also the person most likely to tell me I'm wrong, fastest. He warned me off several things before this book went to print. I printed them anyway. This episode is him collecting. Three objections. The factory farm analogy, which he thinks is way out of line, because pigs can't evaluate a net price calculator and don't come out the other side with a degree. My argument that families want radical price transparency, which he says is contradicted by every family he has ever watched get excited about a scholarship. And my claim that individual colleges can start repairing trust on their own, where he points out that the DOJ already told NACAC what happens when the sector coordinates. I defended myself on all three. I think I won one and a half. Key takeaways Whether the factory farm analogy holds or just offends Why a $30,000 school with a $10,000 award beats a $20,000 school Individual action versus collective action, and what the DOJ left available Links ⁠John McGreal⁠ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnfmcgreal/) on LinkedIn ⁠The Ripon Commitment ⁠ (https://ripon.edu/admission/cost-and-financial-aid/the-ripon-commitment/) ⁠Cornell College Price Transparency⁠ (https://news.cornellcollege.edu/2025/06/Save-Your-Seat.html) ⁠Whitworth University Cost Clarity (https://www.whitworth.edu/cost-clarity/)

17. 

    30 Aug 2026

    Say It with Carin Smith

    College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://a.co/d/0isggQSd) (on Amazon) Small College Consulting Network (https://www.smallcollegeconsulting.com/) National Small College Conference (https://smallcollegeconference.com/) StriveScan (https://www.strivescan.com/) There have been times where our profession has waited too long to say the hard truth, and regretted it. Today, to help us set the stage for the book readings, Carin Smith joins us to share examples of times we waited to say the thing and regretted it, as well as times we addressed the challenge and were better off for it. Carin Smith (https://www.linkedin.com/in/carin-smith-56928752/) is a Senior Associate Director of Admission and Athletic Recruiter at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois. She is the founder of the Chicago Area Regional Representatives Association, co-founder of the National Association of Regional Admission Counselors, and a Past President of the Illinois Association for College Admission Counseling.

18. 

    25 Aug 2026

    Pessimism/Optimism with Nathan Ament

    College Is Broken: Print Edition (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBMRC1LH) (on Amazon): Nathan Ament is my Lunchcast co-host, VP for enrollment at Knox College, and the guy who took Loyola New Orleans test-blind before the rest of the South caught up. He's also been hearing these arguments since before they were arguments. Part Lunchcast, part launch of College Is Broken: Podcast Edition. Nathan prosecutes the book. His case: the tactics I criticize are the tactics that work, and a VP who walks away from what works misses their number. My answer is a question. Works for who? We get into the $750 scholarship that landed as an insult, the gap between what gets said in a cabinet meeting and what everyone in the admissions office knows is happening, Whitworth cutting its sticker price in half, and whether "there are no villains in this book" is optimism or a dodge. Nathan doesn't concede. He gets as far as honest. Three key takeaways: Why "it works" is an incomplete answer The case that the book is pessimistic, argued by someone who's in it What the pandemic proved about how fast institutions can actually move Links: Nathan Ament on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanament/) Jennifer Jessie (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferjessie/ | ) (Jenn the Tutor (https://www.jennthetutor.com/)), quoted in the book and recommended on air The Admissions Directors Lunchcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-admissions-directors-lunchcast/id1559505568) Whitworth's price reset (https://www.whitworth.edu/cost-clarity/)

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