Jeff Kallay has been on a post-pandemic mission to bring fun back to campus, and this episode makes the case that student happiness deserves an actual strategy. Citing Bloomberg Businessweek’s reporting on America’s fun shortage, Jeff, Scott, and Jarrett trace how budget cuts, risk aversion, and ideology drained the joy from student life, and why that matters for enrollment. The conversation connects involvement to career readiness, challenges how SGA budgets get spent, and pushes marketers to trade vague talk of vibrant communities for specifics students can actually picture.
Key Takeaways
- Involvement Is an Outcomes Story: Ohio State research found highly involved students were three times more likely to be considered for a job by employers and rated 18% more career ready. Clubs and campus life belong in your ROI narrative.
- The SGA Problem: SGA leadership represents roughly 1-2% of the student body, yet often controls the activities budget. The result is expensive programming that draws ten students.
- Specificity Sells Fun: “Our vibrant and welcoming community” convinces no one. A $10 Broadway trip with transportation included does.
- Authentic Beats Borrowed: The right programming matches your actual student body, whether that means bingo, concerts, or LARPing. Talk to your RAs and housing directors to find out what it is.andid look at why the whole conference model needs a refresh.
Episode Highlights
- [00:21] The fun shortage is real: Jeff connects Bloomberg’s reporting on America’s fun deficit to what he sees on campus.
- [03:54] Follow the money: How pre-COVID and pandemic-era cuts hollowed out student affairs.
- [05:17] Where the fun went: Risk aversion and ideology reshaped student life starting around 2012.
- [06:50] Already in the tuition: Why clubs and involvement belong in the affordability conversation.
- [09:26] The Ohio State data: What involvement research says about hireability and career readiness.
- [11:44] Programming for the 1%: Why SGA-controlled budgets keep missing the broader audience.
- [16:12] Comfort vs. growth: Private suites, old dorms, and what the Gallup-Purdue findings suggest about involvement.
- [17:44] Scott’s fix: Give student affairs a budget SGA doesn’t control. [20:16] Memory lane: Phone booth stuffing, a mud-soaked softball tournament, and a midnight slip and slide.R
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- The Fun Shortage Is Real, and It’s Making America Miserable (Bloomberg Businessweek, subscription required): The reporting behind Jeff’s stats on closed golf courses, vanished nightclubs, and America’s declining shared fun. URL flag: paywalled; grab the canonical or gift link before publishing.
- America Should Stop Making It So Hard to Have Fun (The Economist, July 2026, subscription required): The piece arguing a bustling late-night economy is good social policy.
- Involvement Study (Ohio State Center for the Study of Student Life): The source of the career readiness and employer consideration data cited in the episode.
- Gallup-Purdue Index: The landmark study behind “how you go to college matters more than where.”
Transcript
Jarrett Smith (00:03):
All right. Welcome everybody to the Enrollment Brief Podcast. As always, I am joined by my Echo Delta colleagues, Scott Rhodes and Jeff Kallay. Welcome guys. It’s good to see you. And Jeff, you have today’s topic. What are we talking about?
Jeff Kallay (00:21):
Hey, we are going to talk about fun and bringing back fun. I have been on a mission post-pandemic to bring fun back to the campus visit, which I hope brings fun back to colleges because it’s not fun. And I think that fun is, as our friend and my former colleague Trent Gilbert says, fun means functional understanding not necessary. And I think college is afraid of fun. And when I say fun, I think I’m really talking about joining up in happiness. So let me connect a couple dots for all of us because liberal arts guy in me love doing that. So I’m listening to Marketplace Podcast and they do an interview with a guy who wrote an article for Bloomberg Business Week that basically said the fun shortage is real and it’s making America miserable. And it goes on to talk about how screen time and isolation and the cost of going out and that some, let me get this data right from this Bloomberg, 2000 golf courses have closed, 7,000 bars and nightclubs have closed in the last two decades.
Jeff Kallay (01:41):
There’s 1.3 million less boats in America. And it just goes on to give all these statistics about how as our screen time rises, our in-person time rises. And I think that isolation speaks down to happiness. And then same way, The Economist had an article that said America should stop making it so hard to have fun and really talks about nightlife culture, not just drinking, but all those things, bowling, a bustling late night economy is good social policy. And I think that colleges have kind of hopped on this as well. And we go to colleges and I don’t know that students are having fun. So I want us to talk about why we should have a strategy of fun that I think gets to joining, like go bowling as a famous sociologist said. And how do we really make this a strategy? Because I believe it’s truly related to outcomes of your resume and involvement and all those things.
Jeff Kallay (02:57):
So I just want us to make a case for being strategic about fun, which I’m going to translate to student happiness. Did I set it up for you gentlemen? Yeah.
Jarrett Smith (03:10):
Yeah, that sounds great.
Jeff Kallay (03:11):
Well, let’s have some fun talking about fun.
Jarrett Smith (03:15):
Jeff, I have a question for you. I mean, as a longtime observer of higher ed and Scott, I’m curious about your thoughts too. You guys have both been in the industry for decades and have seen the ups and downs, I guess, of fun on campus. And I think we’ve talked about this a few different times in our podcast episode so far, but can you put it together for us? What’s been your observations say over the last 10 or 15 years about the highs and lows of fun on campus and maybe some of the underlying, what you see as some of the underlying causes behind that?
Scott Rhodes (03:54):
I think some of the biggest challenges, I think we need to go back before COVID and the cutbacks that were being made before COVID, especially to student affairs. And then COVID hit and where did they cut even more in student affairs? So talking to student affairs staff, which one of their primary jobs is to make sure that students are safe and they’re having some fun. Talking to them, they talk about how they’re trying to get back to pre – COVID. We’re getting there, we’ve been working on it. We have better show rates. I think institutions need to look at those cuts that they made and staffing cuts that they made in those areas so they have staff, so they can have events like Jeff’s talking about and put some of that fun back because those services have been cut drastically.
Jarrett Smith (04:51):
Yeah. And Scott, I know you’ve also, I think talked about, and maybe Jeff, or maybe you brought this up in a prior episode that there has, I think post – COVID been a little bit of a risk aversion that’s entered into student affairs. And Jeff, weren’t you talking to someone on campus and they were like, “Well, actually it’s easier to manage when we have sort of less fun on campus,” to paraphrase.
Jeff Kallay (05:17):
Actually that risk, I’ll tag onto what Scott said. I don’t think I do get student affair cuts, but to me, there were some simultaneous things that happened around 2012, 13. And I think we had a shift kind of coming out of millennials who brought fun, team up, do it, we’re all in this together. And maybe it was too much fun and student affairs cracked down on risk. And then I also think culture wars and ideology crept into it, which I think took away fun as well. So okay, you got too big of a party, there’s too much risk happening, sexual assault, those kind of things. And colleges just shut it all down and went to the far instead of managing it in a way. So I don’t think this all has to be about drinking and having that kind of thing. I think this is about how, if we talk about affordability, and I want to bring this into ROI, going away to college, it’s included in tuition and fees, is all the clubs, is all the joining, this notion about happiness and the availability of how expensive all these things are that these articles about happiness and joining and fun are saying that it’s expensive to join a pickleball club, right?
Jeff Kallay (06:50):
It’s expensive to go bowling. Well, most colleges have all of that built into their infrastructure and it’s built into tuition and fees. So I want to challenge us to think about how do we tell that narrative? How do we market that, that you want to get involved, you want to join, you want to have fun because yeah, it’s going to make you happy in the moment. Hopefully it’s going to give you life skills, but it’s going to help you in the workplace. And Jarrett, you shared some interesting data from Ohio State that I think is relevant to this.
Jarrett Smith (07:26):
Yeah. I mean, Jeff, I know one of your questions coming into this is like, if you were a CMO or VP of marketing, how would you market fun? And I think it’s a great question. I think part of it is, as you said, connecting it to things that are a little more meaningful. And I don’t know if this is primarily for parents or if this is also maybe a segment of students who might also need to hear this, a little bit of permission to have fun and to seek out fun on campus. Because I think there’s a sense of like, well, okay, you have sushi in dining and you’ve got a lazy river around campus. And if that’s the kind of fun we’re talking about, I don’t know how. It’s hard for me to see how that really translates. But the reality is a lot of really valuable learning happens in clubs and organizations.
Jarrett Smith (08:21):
Students are managing budgets, they are resolving conflict, they are trying to market themselves and draw in members to their organizations and a lot of skills that they can pick up along the way. So I don’t know if it’s necessarily. Some of it I think can be in the more outward facing sort of marketing and promotion of the institution. I definitely think that once someone has expressed an interest in your institution, I mean, this needs to be something that is talked about as a really valuable, meaningful way to develop career readiness. If someone’s gone to the trouble to visit campus and sit down for your little presentation at the beginning or you’re going by the center for student involvement or whatever it is, you need to be talking about how these things, not only is there a lot to offer, but as Ohio State found, students that are involved in these things do generally graduate more career ready with more higher ability and social skills.
Jeff Kallay (09:26):
Looking at that data point, right? Highly involved students were three times more likely to be considered for a job by employers than uninvolved and moderately involved two times more likely, right? And then as far as highly involved students were rated as 18% more career ready and moderately involved 11. So to me, this ties into outcomes and it ties into ROI that it’s not just your classroom and your degree. Are you taking advantage of all the opportunities the college provides? But are colleges telling that story? As someone who sits in gazillion information sessions, no.
Jarrett Smith (10:14):
I think when they try to tell the story, they go to really bland, non-specific statements like our vibrant and welcoming community. It’s like we slap that on the website and we call it done. And I know really good marketers in higher ed is like, no, we don’t stop there. But a lot of schools struggle to communicate that outside of the really safe, cliche ways. And I think it’s, to me, part of the antidote is getting ultra specific. It’s like, don’t talk about your vibrant campus community. Talk about how throughout the year we’re taking low cost trips to New York City and for 10 bucks you get to go see a Broadway show and we provide the transportation. One of our clients does that and it’s like, that’s amazing. I’m excited about that. And that’s just one of many things that they offer on campus for students to go out and have fun and get exposure to things.
Jarrett Smith (11:19):
And don’t tell me that that cultural exposure going for a kid that’s maybe grown up in a rural place or a smaller town and then getting that experience of going to Broadway and seeing the first class musical theater happening, that doesn’t leave an impression, that doesn’t have value to it. So I don’t know what the career ROI on that is, but I think it’s pretty incredible. Scott?
Scott Rhodes (11:44):
Yeah. I think something that we’re missing here that needs to be fixed before you can do all that, and it’s the problem that nobody ever wants to talk about. When I go to campuses and I ask to speak to students, it seems like there’s always somebody from SGA there. I always try my best to educate them on what I see that some of the challenges are with SGA. SGA attracts leadership that represents about probably 1% or 2% of the campus community. So your leadership are planning these events, approving these clubs and organizations and are controlling the budget that Jeff was talking about. I honestly think universities need to find ways to pull some of that control back because they’re missing the broader audience. They wonder why so many students, only 10 students are showing up when they spent tens of thousands of dollars on events.
Scott Rhodes (12:43):
Well, a petting zoo is not attractive to 99% of the students on campus. I get it during finals week and things like that, but I’m seeing campuses where they’re doing this on a regular basis. I mean, some of these campus now are having bingo and it’s popular and they’ve made a modern bingo. I mean, every single campus I go on now, Jeff, you’ve seen it all the time, flyers for bingo. I love those ideas like that, that are outside the box. Gen Z should be excellent bingo players when they retire because they’re getting a lot of practice in college.
Jarrett Smith (13:22):
And crocheting too.
Scott Rhodes (13:24):
How do we get to SGA to fix the issue of attracting the larger audience? And I think that will allow us to have more fun on campuses. I get it. Most of the students, they weren’t involved in student government as a high school student. They’re not going to do it in college, but that leadership needs leadership from student affairs or oversight from student affairs to help drive that bus better.
Jeff Kallay (13:56):
Scott, to your point, what I hear you saying is that things that have been promoted as fun really truly have been a response to perceived stress. Yeah,
Jeff Kallay (14:09):
In some cases. Puppies at final. It’s a response to, “Oh, life is so hard and you’re so stressed.” Whereas bingo is just flat out fun and you’re winning great prizes and you’re socializing with your friends. My good old Roman Catholic grandma, man, she played bingo three times a week, but it was also very social. She could do 26 cards at one time. Go Helen. And I love it. But it was social, it was gossip. In person. It was her friends and her network that was beyond bingo. And I think that’s what we’re getting here is joining creates happiness, happiness creates fun. And yes, Jared, I do think we need to be more exacting in that message and we do need to say joining creates an ROI. I mean, I joke, I always want a school to have a marketing plan that says 80% of what I use in life and work I learned outside of my major.
Jeff Kallay (15:14):
I was an RA. I was an editor of the yearbook. I was involved in a fraternity. I was highly involved in intramurals. I broke a fraternity brother’s rib. And I will tell you, being on SGA taught me, excuse me, being in yearbook taught me deadlines, right? Being an RA taught me leadership and being in a fraternity taught me to get along with people I don’t like, which I have used robustly in my work career. And I don’t think we tell those things in outcomes, and I don’t think we blend all that into the ROI. And I think everyone would win if we did, and college students would be challenged to join up more and have more fun because America’s not happy and America’s miserable. And I would like to think if college students have more fun and more happy, then that’s going to translate for when they leave college.
Jarrett Smith (16:12):
Jeff, I feel like you have been really consistent on this notion that a lot of times the things that make young people feel comfortable are not the things that are actually good for them in the long run. So for instance, in our residence halls, we have these really nice single occupant suites and I have my own private bathroom and you’ve been really consistent about, hey, actually there’s a lot of value in that dirty old dorm with lousy heating and cooling with the shared bathrooms and the roommate that you didn’t get to pick and all that kind of stuff that it puts people out of their comfort zone because frankly, if a freshman is hanging out in their dorm a lot, they’re doing it wrong. And we know this from, Jeff, I think it was the, you and I both have talked about this, was it the old Purdue Gallup study that showed that the more students are just involved in general outside the classroom, the better their outcomes, regardless of where they go to school.
Jarrett Smith (17:26):
So Scott, I know you’ve seen this firsthand on campuses that you’ve been a part of. And I mean, is there a little bit of light coercion that needs to happen, a little bit of forced fun in order to have real fun?
Scott Rhodes (17:44):
I don’t know if it needs to be forced fun. What I think is student affairs need budget that they control, that SGA does not have influence in, that they can plan events that they know that will attract a broader audience. Typically, you have the SGA budget, which comes in student fees and they get the control at and then they make. Every institution where I was over student affairs, I made sure there was money outside of SGA that we program for the broader audience. And I think presidents, provost, senior leadership needs to go back to the drawing board when they’re looking at budgets and saying, “How can we fund student affairs again with oversight and student input and all those things that need to happen?” I get that, that we can attract more students to these events, have broader events, larger events, and SGA continue with the clubs and organizations, use that money for that, that approval process, but have a separate process.
Scott Rhodes (18:50):
When I’ve done that, we’ve had robust student life, especially when I was at Florida Poly, even building from nothing, we had to invest substantially in the beginning in
Jeff Kallay (19:04):
Order – But I also think what you. Let me interrupt, Scott, is you did authentic fun that matched that student body.
Scott Rhodes (19:12):
Yes, Jeff, thank you. And Florida Poly at that time and still to this day has a very unique student body and we knew what to do and what they were interested in, LARPing and all these things, live action. What is it? Live action –
Jeff Kallay (19:32):
Live action role play.
Scott Rhodes (19:33):
Role play,
Jeff Kallay (19:34):
Sorry. Yeah, that’s authentic.
Scott Rhodes (19:36):
It was authentic Florida Poly. And so whatever is authentic to your students and you need to talk to your students, you need to get out on campus, you need to listen, you need to spend time in student affairs. Staff is great at that. They know these students, they can listen. You can talk to the housing directors and the RAs and find out what they think their students are interested in because RAs have their own budgets to do certain things and what’s working with them, what would be something bigger in scale? What do they turn out most for? Those type of things need to be pushed harder. And I think then you’ll see a real difference in fun coming back to campuses.
Jarrett Smith (20:16):
Well, gents, we are coming up on about time. I want to suggest a way to wrap this up. If you could go back into the memory banks to your college experience and a fun moment that has stuck with you today, that you can share in a public podcast.
Scott Rhodes (20:35):
I can’t talk about spring break.
Jarrett Smith (20:38):
Probably best not. This is a family friendly show, Scott.
Jeff Kallay (20:44):
One of the lifestyle centers here down in the villages where I live, there’s always a boutique with a clever sign. And on Tuesday it said, “Most stories like alcohol, most stories begin with remember when, and it’s like drinking and never with salad.” But then again, maybe now salads could make a memory, but I think that’s a great one. I’m going to go ahead and dive in. One Saturday night at Lee College, Christian Evangelical College, we were just hanging out on the center campus and crammed as many people as we could into a telephone booth, if we all remember those, which then led us to getting a friend’s VW beetle, an old retro one, and then seeing how many people we could cram into that one. And I think we got like 21 and called the Cleveland Daily Banner who came out and took a photo of it and put us in the Sunday paper, right?
Jeff Kallay (21:40):
And that was spontaneous and that was just a group of people hanging out together and having fun and we don’t have to overthink fun, we just have to do it.
Jarrett Smith (21:54):
Scott, what about you?
Scott Rhodes (21:56):
I think back to my college days, I think it was probably a club sport was softball and we were playing in a tournament and ended up pouring down rain the entire day. I mean from the start to finish and we continued to play the games. We had a blast. There was four inches of water, people are falling down in big puddles, everybody’s muddy top to bottom. And then we went to Pizza Hut and university paid for pizza and it was a good time. Even though it was a rainy, cold day, we still had a great time. I still think back on that fondly as that was one of the funnest days I had, even though against all odds, we still had fun. I don’t know if we even won a game that day. It was rough.
Jarrett Smith (22:44):
Didn’t matter. Didn’t
Scott Rhodes (22:45):
Matter. So that was fun.
Jarrett Smith (22:48):
For me, my old alma mater, Florida Southern College, one of the absolute most fun things I ever did was, it was on a Wednesday night, probably coming up on finals. Everybody was a little tense. We need to blow off some steam. And somebody had the bright idea, probably like 11 o’clock at night to get some visqueen plastic and some dish soap, and we found the steepest hill we could on campus and commandeered a water hose. And there were probably 20 or 30 of us sliding down, like rocketing down this hill that actually, it wasn’t very smart on our part. It kind of ended in a parking lot and once the grass got really wet, you’d kind of slide off into the asphalt, but we had so much fun. And in retrospect, campus safety had to know what we were doing, but I think to your point, it was an appropriate amount of somewhat dangerous fun that they didn’t put the kibosh on and man, we had a blast and I’ll always hang on to that one.
Jarrett Smith (23:50):
Well, Jeff, thank you for bringing up this topic. Scott, thank you for your insights guys. It was a good talk.
Jeff Kallay (23:56):
It all connects to our past topics about vibe school and SEC popularity and game day. And at the core of that is fun and involvement and joining and campuses that support that are winning. Thanks for listening. Thanks for trusting me on this fun topic, Jared and Scott, and joining in with your great thoughts.
