This Breakout paired two pieces that turn out to be the same conversation: Brandon Busteed on the internship gap, and Wesleyan president Michael Roth’s New York Times essay on what college is for.
Busteed challenges a familiar myth, that the size of an endowment signals the quality of a student’s experience. It does not. What predicts a strong experience is far simpler: whether a student had a job or internship that mattered. Yet internships remain a weak spot, too few to go around and easiest to reach for students who already have resources and connections. The panel kept returning to the idea that the work has to be personal, and that advancement can help close the gap, whether by funding internships directly or by rethinking what a future endowment could be built to support.
Roth names the other half. Amid AI and a harsh job market, he argues that college still teaches people how to learn, and how to be human, and that using AI to skip the hard work means learning less. Where the two pieces meet is what binds alumni for life: the ability to trace one’s success, and one’s growth as a person, back to the place that shaped them. The job for advancement is to build those connective threads on purpose, and tell the stories well.
Rod Danan, “Internships Beat Majors,” a conversation with Brandon Busteed (The Unpulled Lever, E4): https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/e4-internships-beat-majors-brandon-busteed-ceo-edconic-rod-h-danan-elq8e/
Michael S. Roth, “Three Cheers for Students Starting College,” The New York Times (opinion), September 4, 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/opinion/college-freshman-education.html
Breakout summary created primarily by AI
