Premier Doug Ford’s government is taking another swipe at green standards while nixing a requirement for municipalities to build climate change goals into their official plans.
ALISON BEARD: Welcome to HBR On Leadership. I’m HBR Executive Editor Alison Beard. On this show, we share case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. We carefully curate this feed from across the HBR portfolio, aiming to help you unlock your next level of leadership.
I hope you enjoy the episode.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael.
Launching a new initiative is one way a manager can make their mark in a new job – or show their value at a company they’ve been at for years.
So it makes sense that more and more managers across industries might be piling on more and more new projects.
The downside, though, is that more and more work gets saddled on middle managers and frontline employees. Workers are getting overwhelmed.
ROSE HOLLISTER: When you have large organizations and lots of different people wanting to make things happen, the ripple effect all the way down is where it simply becomes almost impossible to keep up. And with all good intentions – people want to support these initiatives, they are great ideas – there are simply too many to be able to support to the right level.
That’s Rose Hollister. She and Michael Watkins looked at how companies – like a Fortune 500 retailer – ultimately suffer from overloading their employees like this.
They are the co-authors of the HBR article “Too Many Projects,” and both consultants at Genesis Advisers. Rose and Michael, thanks for joining us today.
MICHAEL WATKINS: Great to be here.
ROSE HOLLISTER: Thank you, happy to be here.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So has initiative overload always been a problem or are initiatives more popular now?
ROSE HOLLISTER: We think that initiative overload is becoming more of a problem. We think it’s been a problem, but we think it’s escalating, and we think it’s escalating for a few reasons. One, organizations over the last five to 10 years have gotten leaner and so they cut costs. Usually one of the main ways to do that is by cutting headcount. And then usually what doesn’t happen is that they don’t change the work or cut the work to fit the cut in people.
The other thing is that if you think about it, year after year, a department or a function wants to do something better; they want to launch something; so they start something new this year, something else next year and the following year and large departments might launch many initiatives and that happens over an entire organization. And then there are legacy initiatives that have been in place for a long time that maybe should be stopped but haven’t been.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Is this just kind of like every executive has to have his initiatives that he’s running or she’s running?
MICHAEL WATKINS: This is a part of the problem and it’s not uncommon. A leader only has a couple of years in a role. They want to make a mark. One way to make a mark as to launch a signature initiative, right? And this is also a great example of what we call the “magnifier effect,” right, which is you may have executives, you know, individually launching a few initiatives, but then there’s some critical level at the organization – in this case, the store managers, where it all comes to a focal point and people literally get burned out by everything that’s kind of coming down towards them.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: It’s interesting because there are like, you know, mathematical equations that support that too, right? It’s like, if you look at a road, traffic’s flowing smoothly and then all of a sudden you just get a couple more cars on that road and the road can bear you have a traffic jam.
MICHAEL WATKINS: Exactly.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Sounds like the same thing.
MICHAEL WATKINS: Very similar, but I think also just understand that those executives that you mentioned earlier that are launching those signature initiatives – that’s happening in all the departments. And they’re all trickling down, but where implementation needs to happen often is at focal points where, you know, it all kind of comes together. And so a couple of initiatives from each department can translate into a dozen right at the level of something like the store manager.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So I just want to ask why simple sort of prioritizing techniques don’t seem to work here, because this is something where I know in my own career when I’ve felt overwhelmed, my boss said, “Well, I don’t expect you to keep every ball in the air, just the most important ones. And some things will drop and that’s fine. And these are your priorities. And just do them.” Why doesn’t that kind of conversation help?
ROSE HOLLISTER: I think the problem is, as Michael said, there are so many different functions or departments all with signature important initiatives. So if marketing has their initiatives for the year, if IT has theirs, if HR has theirs, if operations has theirs – and I could go on and on. In big organizations they might be doing multiple big initiatives. Well, they usually prioritize in silos and they say, “We’re going to do these five or these 10 or these 20.” Well, that happens in every single function and what usually does not happen, is a senior leadership team saying, “Let’s look at all of these. Let’s look across the enterprise.” What Michael and I would call a balcony view. Let’s get on the balcony. Let’s look. Let’s not just look at the dollars this will take. Let’s look at what the hours it will take for people to either learn this, support this, execute on this, sustain this.
That kind of inventory usually is not done. And somebody can juggle, but there are so many things coming at them that prioritizing isn’t enough at the team leader or employee level. That prioritizing has to happen, should be happening at the senior team level.
MICHAEL WATKINS: I love your example because you had a boss and you had a reasonable boss. And I want you to imagine you had three bosses, none of whom were reasonable, all shooting things at you – maybe with conflicting priorities. All asserting that it’s really important that you do this work today.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Oh, that sounds like a nightmare!
MICHAEL WATKINS: Right, and that’s what really does it. It’s both the number of channels that things are coming out people through, combined with a really a lack of attentiveness to what people reasonably can accomplish.
ROSE HOLLISTER: Well, and just to build on what Michael said, that “reasonably accomplish” – depending on the culture, it might not be culturally okay to say we’re at our limits. And people fear saying I can’t do more or they’ve tried it and they haven’t gotten heard. And so I think there’s also a, “We can do this, let’s work harder, not more!” And well that only works when there’s a reasonable amount of things on the plate.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So if senior executives are somewhat clueless to the havoc that they’re wreaking and people are either afraid to speak up or aren’t heard, then how do companies know if they’re creating this problem?
MICHAEL WATKINS: I think that’s a really big problem, which is often they don’t, right? This is something we call “impact blindness,” that basically senior management does not have sufficient visibility into the cumulative impact that the executive team is having on people at lower levels. Maybe they’re not paying attention, maybe they don’t want to pay attention, maybe they’ve got their own agendas they’re pursuing, but the net impact is they do not really have visibility into what they’re doing to the organization. And the organization will survive doing this for a while, and then the cracks will begin to start showing.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: When those cracks start to show, what do they look like? Is it decreased engagement? Is it turnover? What is it?
ROSE HOLLISTER: It’s decreased engagement. It’s turnover. It’s people leaving for other jobs. There was an SVP that we were in an interview with and he was a leader at a human resource consulting firm and he said, “I love this organization. I love the work. I love the team. The pace is unsustainable. If I stay here, I will have a heart attack.” And he left and he found another role.
I was just talking to one of my clients and they had gotten in their engagement survey, they had gotten scores about that work-life balance wasn’t where they wanted it to be. And as they unpacked that and said why – it wasn’t that managers weren’t flexible and weren’t saying, “Yes, take care of your home life, your children,” those things. It was that there were simply too many initiatives going on for people to be able to get it done in a reasonable amount of time.
MICHAEL WATKINS: I would add that this sort of thing can work okay when unemployment is high, right? And people are worried about their jobs and they’re worried about saying things. But when you start to get to a full employment situation and people have lots of opportunities, the real risk is you’re going to lose your best talent.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: And is that because the good people have more options or because the good people are the ones who tend to be the most overloaded with a million initiatives?
MICHAEL WATKINS: Yes, to both. Right? I think it’s both things. One is that they tend to bear the brunt, right – your high performer, you know, tends to get more loaded on them, right, which of course can generate some resentment because other players are not doing the job and they have options. And so they look for places that are going to appreciate them and modulate the workload better than where they are.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: How do companies usually try to solve this problem and does that work?
ROSE HOLLISTER: Well, typically, first of all, they say “By function, let’s go prioritize.” And so the marketing department says, “Okay, here’s what’s top for us, here’s what we’re doing, let us lead on our initiatives,” and that happens across every other function – whether that’s finance, whether that’s IT. That typically doesn’t work because there’s not an understanding of the impact.
Now there was someone that we know that looked at his organization and realized this was an issue and he asked every senior leader of this organization – the C-suite – to come to a three day meeting and as their homework, they had to bring every initiative that was happening under their oversight: What was the business case for it? What was it taking in people time? And then how did it meet two screens – one, to support the building of the business, the growth of the business, and second to support customer satisfaction?
Now that C-suite took three days, they looked at every single initiative, and as a group they said, “We won’t do this, we won’t do this, we won’t do this.” Then they reallocated resources from the things that they weren’t doing to the key initiatives. But at the end of the day, they significantly decreased the number of initiatives across the enterprise. When someone does that, the whole organization wins and the business results gave proof to this because looking down the road, customer service scores did go up, the business did grow and people looked back on that three day retreat as a turning point in the organization.
MICHAEL WATKINS: Yeah. I would add a couple things to that, too. That’s potentially a highly conflictual process. Right? That’s a really difficult process of making tradeoffs between people that really want to drive certain things in their organizations. Second thing is you’ve got to be very careful about interdependencies between things, right? You can stop this and it turns out it really impacts that – and so you’ve got to be willing to think through those interdependencies. And then, you know, once you’ve decided to kill something, you actually have to kill it. I mean we see these Zombie initiatives, right, that they sort of rise from the dead because they’ve got an agenda associated with them and people find little hidden pockets of resource or think they do to try and pursue them.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So usually when projects don’t die or stay dead, leaders get blamed by employees and employees who feel kind of disgruntled and kind of like, “Ugh, like, you know, management never kills any these projects,” but I know that from talking to leaders, leaders feel like employees won’t stop doing the work. I mean – it’s sort of each side kind of blames the other camp.
MICHAEL WATKINS: Yeah. I’ve been doing some work with a big pharma company – R&D. And I think I’ve seen this very much happened because people get very identified with projects, right? They begin to think their employment may depend on certain projects being pursued or they really strongly believe that this particular drug is going to change the world. And so there’s resistance to this notion that we’re actually going to kill something. Prioritization – really prioritizing and really making it stick – that’s really hard.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So as a leader, how can you deliver that message convincingly and compassionately?
ROSE HOLLISTER: I think part of this, and one of the things that we find is there needs to be better dialogue going both ways. There needs to be an understanding from the people who are being asked to execute on this initiative, what’s the true impact? Or if we’re stopping it, are there pieces of this that are related somewhere else? Because in big organizations, as Michael said, there are so many interdependencies that stopping something – maybe you can stop 85 percent, but maybe another department is depending on this 15 percent. And so part of this is more robust conversations about what will it mean to stop? What’s the impact on the organization? If we stop and what’s the plan to stop it?
MICHAEL WATKINS: You need to recognize that really doing this kind of privatization and winnowing across an organization is a kind of change management exercise. And change management exercises tend to work best when you start with the why: Why are we doing this? What are the benefits, right? Rather than just jumping straight to the “what” or the “how”?
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So clearly it would be better to prevent this problem from occurring. What are some of the questions that leaders should be asking before launching initiatives to avoid this kind of thing?
ROSE HOLLISTER: I think the example for me would be if I just say “I’m going to buy a car” and I budgeted for my car. Well I go and buy that car, but if I can’t afford the gas, if I can’t afford the maintenance and the insurance, I can’t really afford the car. Well, I think for a lot of initiatives we get the initial funding, but we don’t understand all the peripheral things that are needed in order to support it for the long-term. So it’s understanding will this initiative truly solve the problem? Did we do enough homework to understand whether this isn’t just a Band-aid but it’s actually the right answer, and then if it is the right answer, have we truly looked at the costs, and does it make sense – with all the other things in the organization – is this truly one of the priorities? One of the quotes we really like is from Steve Jobs that says that we all need to get better at saying “no” to hundreds of really good ideas.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: What about the sort of – I think of it as the closet cleaning approach, where for every new piece of clothing you buy you have to donate an old piece of clothing or give it away. I mean, can you take the same approach with initiatives or is that just too rigid?
ROSE HOLLISTER: It might be like, let’s say that I buy a wool coat, but I give away a pair of socks. So they’re not quite equal. So I think that where it’s a nice idea to add an initiative, take one away. I think it’s about how, what will it take for the organization to support this initiative?
I used to, when I was running the team at Mcdonald’s, I used to ask my team about once a quarter: “What are we doing that we could stop doing and no one would notice?” We also one year took the time to say for everything that we’re delivering, what does it take in time to deliver it? And we got a really amazing sense of if we were doing a high potential officer program, what did it take us in hours to support that. And we did that across every single program we ran.
And then when we sat down to plan for the following year, I had all these great ideas. I wanted to start this. I wanted to start this. I wanted to do this. And my team who had been working with me tracking it said “We have 15 percent free time. That’s all. So if you want to start these things, are we going to get other resources? Are we going to stop doing some other things?” We had done our homework to truly know what it took to deliver. Most times we’re all just working so hard, we don’t really know what it takes to make something happen.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: If you’re talking to people at the C-suite level, what’s sort of the most important thing you’d want them to take away when they’re thinking about initiatives in their company, either starting new ones are finding ways to cut back?
ROSE HOLLISTER: I would really encourage the C-suite to get an inventory to truly understand across the enterprise what are the projects – the initiatives – that are currently in place, and then what I see pretty much every year with a budget process is new initiatives are added to that. So before any of those things are funded for the C-suite team to take enough time to say what are we already doing? What of those things do we keep, and then what do we add?
MICHAEL WATKINS: As you’re thinking about doing an inventory and looking at what your organization is doing as a senior executive team, don’t just look top down. Start at the base layer of your leadership and management, the people managing your frontline contributors, and take a very hard look at what’s happening there.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Once you’ve done the inventory, what does success with initiatives look like?
MICHAEL WATKINS: Yeah, I think it’s an important point, right? Which is that success in doing this doesn’t just mean that you’re sort of funding what you’re doing better. It also means you can do things that really are going to contribute, you know, powerfully to what is going to drive the business forward. So there’s a combination of benefits here. I mean sometimes you’ll see as a part of doing this exercise that there’s this little jewel of initiative that really isn’t getting the support it needs, right? And okay, we’re gonna put some resource into that. Sometimes it’s: This thing is a dog, right? We’re gonna kill it and we’re going to make sure it stays dead and sometimes it’s a, “Hey, this means we can do this. We can pursue something that’s really pretty exciting.”
ROSE HOLLISTER: I think what we find is that when companies do fewer initiatives, the most important ones finally get the support they need because people have the time, they have the focus, they have the energy to really move that initiative forward. The fewer they’re doing, they’re doing those fewer much better, and so instead of every initiative getting to move things to steps, one or two big initiatives can move things significantly farther forward.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: We’ve talked a lot about handling initiatives that are kind of pushed down onto you, but I’m also wondering about the way that sometimes managers reach out and grab initiatives that maybe they shouldn’t. It has happened where sometimes managers will say, “Oh gosh, my team needs a piece of that project, or my team needs a seat at that table” and suddenly you’re contributing to initiative overload even though you know it’s a problem, so how can you resist that urge to kind of horn in to a project where you feel like maybe you should have a seat at that table even if you don’t have time?
MICHAEL WATKINS: Yeah. There’s a question of managerial maturity here, and unfortunately not all managers are mature, right? They’re not able to distinguish between those things that they should be doing – or more importantly committing their people to be doing because that’s often where the cost rests – as opposed to what are all of the lovely little pies I’d love to have my fingers in.
ROSE HOLLISTER: In some ways I believe this is at the heart of it: We all want to be involved. We all want to be well-thought of. We all want to be showing that we’re making progress and improvements and making things happen and we have limits. And so I think that’s the challenge here is: “What’s the highest and best use of my time? Yes, I’d love to weigh in on that project. With everything else we’re being asked to deliver, can we?” Sometimes the organization is pushing us to do it, sometimes we are part of the problem because we want to be in there and we put ourselves forth for volunteering for this or being a part of this and we’re the ones that sometimes cause our individual initiative overload.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So if you’re just a middle manager or individual employee, is it realistic that there’s something you could do to fight initiative overload at your company?
ROSE HOLLISTER: I’d say start with your own area and look at: “What do we have on our plates? And then be realistic with what does it take, not to just support our own initiatives, but what are our interdependencies and then working to say, “What can we limit? Can we get additional resources? Are there things we can stop doing? Can we move the calendar out? So, when I think about this as a middle manager, what I really think about is that locus of control. What does that middle manager, what are they able to impact? What are they able to influence? Because they can start with their area.
Part of this is also making sure that they’ve had the conversations. I worked with somebody for years who was very well-thought of and people kept saying, “Give him this new responsibility, give him this new area.” And this came up year after year and his response was always, “I will take that on when I get the resources,” and as an employee I was like, “Can we say no? Is that okay? I felt bad. I thought, oh, we’ll figure it out.”
But what I realized is that his answer was the right answer, not just for our function but for the organization.
ALISON BEARD: HBR On Leadership will be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation from Harvard Business Review.
This episode was produced by Mary Dooe. On Leadership’s team includes Maureen Hoch, Rob Eckhardt, Erica Truxler, and Ian Fox.
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When the discussion turns to “monster stocks” that have done extremely well from the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI), many investors’ first thoughts turn to chip companies like Nvidia. If they expand their notions of stocks expected to be AI beneficiaries, the thoughts might include memory storage companies (i.e., data centers). Further expansion might eventually lead to the realization that the companies that could deliver some of the biggest gains from AI over the next several years aren’t even from the tech sector. Rather, the biggest beneficiaries might just be the energy companies uniquely positioned to serve the growing power needs of data centers.
Two energy companies experiencing AI tailwinds you might want to consider buying and holding for the long term are Bloom Energy (BE +9.93%) and Vistra (VST +1.90%).
Image source: Getty Images.
Bloom is carving out a role as an on-site infrastructure provider with its solid oxide fuel cells. These cells convert fuel into electricity in a highly efficient and relatively clean way that also provides consistent power, and Bloom’s energy servers can be up and running in 90 days.
Bloom initiated a contract in July 2025 to provide its fuel cells onsite to power to select Oracle data centers. It also expanded an agreement with Equinix in 2025 to help power its data centers.
As it ramps up production, the company is unprofitable, but revenue is growing steadily. Bloom reported $2 billion in revenue in 2025, a roughly 37% increase from the previous year. It’s also showing that the demand for its cells is persistent. At the end of 2025, Bloom finished with a product order backlog of $6 billion.
Today’s Change
(9.93%) $13.49
Current Price
$149.40
Market Cap
$38B
Day’s Range
$146.42 – $156.75
52wk Range
$15.15 – $180.90
Volume
340K
Avg Vol
11M
Gross Margin
30.89%
For this stock to work out for long-term investors, Bloom will need to show it can convert its backlog into revenue, then turn growing revenue into eventual profits. The forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio is a steep 94.3, and the beta is 3.1, meaning the stock price is more than three times as volatile as the broader market. That means this is an investment only the most aggressive long-term buyers should consider.
Investors who believe in Bloom’s long-term potential could consider dollar-cost averaging (DCA) — buying a set number of shares or investing a fixed dollar amount on a set schedule. That helps offset some of the worry about buying a large number of shares all at once and watching the price swing lower, as using DCA can help lower your average cost per share over time.
Vistra operates a diversified energy generation fleet, including natural gas, nuclear, coal, solar, and battery storage that serves residential, commercial, and industrial clients. Over recent years, the narrative around the company has shifted from a traditional utility to a high-growth opportunity, as it has tapped more into servicing AI demand.
As two examples, it has an agreement with Meta Platforms to support its energy needs through nuclear power plants. It also has an agreement with Amazon to supply Amazon Web Services with nuclear power.
Today’s Change
(1.90%) $2.92
Current Price
$156.60
Market Cap
$52B
Day’s Range
$156.48 – $161.40
52wk Range
$99.24 – $219.82
Volume
102K
Avg Vol
5.4M
Gross Margin
17.72%
Dividend Yield
0.59%
To further its capabilities to meet energy-driven demand, pending regulatory approvals, Vistra has a definitive agreement to acquire the utility company Cogentrix Energy for $4 billion. If the acquisition closes, it will add 10 natural gas facilities to Vistra’s operations.
Shifting into the narrative of being a potential growth stock also means Vistra will have higher expectations to clear. The stock price is up 54% over the last year, but it has been on a noticeable downward dip since its Q4 2025 earnings report largely seemed to underwhelm investors after its release in late February.
The forward P/E ratio is 16.8, so its next quarterly report will be important to show it can justify its valuation, as well as the narrative that it truly is more than a traditional utility provider.
A bonus worth mentioning on Vistra is that it offers a dividend payout. The yield of 0.6% is not significant for those primarily seeking income generation, but Vistra is still paying shareholders as its growth story continues to take shape.
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Key Points
The sticker price at some private colleges now tops $70,000 a year. At public universities, the published rate for in-state students averages nearly $12,000. But federal data and institutional reporting tell a consistent story: the vast majority of students are not writing checks for those amounts.
The frustrating part is that most of this discounting is done in secret – via individual financial aid awards. That makes price transparency difficult – and many families get stuck on the headline numbers.
According to the most recent data, only about one in eight undergraduates pay the full advertised price. This aligns with The College Investor’s recent study of what families actually pay for college out of pocket.
Nearly everyone else receives a discount — and for a growing share, tuition is covered entirely.
At private nonprofit colleges, the gap between sticker price and what students pay has never been wider.
NACUBO’s 2024 Tuition Discounting Study, found that the average discount rate reached 56.3% for full-time undergraduates in the 2024-25 academic year — a record high. That means for every dollar of published tuition, these schools returned roughly 56 cents in institutional gift aid.
In other words, if a school published a tuition rate of $50,000 per year, the actual tuition cost out of pocket would only be $21,850. Nearly 90% of incoming freshmen received some form of institutional discount.
Public four-year universities show a similar pattern, though the mechanics differ. The College Board reports that average net tuition and fees for first-time, full-time in-state students at public four-year schools fell to an estimated $2,300 for 2025-26 — compared to a published sticker price of $11,950. That is an effective discount of more than 80% on tuition alone.
Community colleges stand out even more. Full-time students at two-year public institutions have been receiving enough average grant aid to fully cover tuition and fees since the 2009-10 academic year, according to the College Board.
With more than 30 states now operating some form of free community college program, that number makes sense.
Brookings Institution research by economist Phillip Levine found that only 26% of in-state public college students and 16% of private nonprofit students paid the full sticker price in the 2019-20 academic year.
Both figures have dropped sharply over time: down from 53% and 29% respectively in 1995-96.
Even among higher-income families who do not qualify for need-based aid, the share paying full price has fallen significantly.
At public institutions, 79% of higher-income students paid sticker price in 1995-96, but by 2019-20, that had dropped to 47%. At private schools, the decline was steeper: from 64% to 28%.
The growth of merit-based aid explains much of this shift. Colleges increasingly use institutional scholarships to attract students regardless of financial need, making discounts available across the income spectrum.
The result: the sticker price is becoming an unreliable indicator of what college actually costs for almost everyone.
Tuition discounts are real, but they don’t tell the whole story of college affordability. As we reported in our analysis of what families really pay for college out of pocket, most households end up spending between $25,000 and $100,000 over the course of a degree once room, board, fees, transportation, and other living costs are factored in.
Only about 1.35% of bachelor’s degree students receive grants and scholarships that fully cover the entire cost of attendance, according to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study.
In other words, a student who pays zero in tuition may still face tens of thousands of dollars in housing, meal plan, and living expenses that are not covered by grants.
This gap between “tuition is free” and “college is free” is where many families get caught off guard. A $0 tuition bill at a state university still comes with a $10,000-$15,000 annual tab for housing and food alone.
This is also where families can get themselves in financial trouble, and need to separate out the value of the degree vs. the value of the experience.
If most students are not paying sticker price, why does it matter? Because the published number still shapes decisions. Research consistently shows that lower-income students are more likely to rule out schools based on the advertised price without investigating the net cost.
A 2025 EducationDynamics survey (PDF File) found that 46% of students considered tuition cost the most important factor in their college decision, yet fewer than half found it easy to locate actual pricing information on college websites.
Some colleges have responded with “tuition resets,” dropping published prices closer to what students actually pay. Others have expanded net price calculators and financial aid messaging. But the broader system still relies on a high-sticker, high-discount model that rewards families who know how to navigate it and penalizes those who don’t.
Never eliminate a school based on sticker price alone. The published cost is the ceiling, not the floor. Run the school’s net price calculator before making any assumptions about affordability.
File the FAFSA regardless of income. Merit aid, state grants, and institutional discounts often require a FAFSA on file. Skipping it can cost you money you would have qualified for.
Budget for the full cost of attendance, not just tuition. Room, board, and living expenses routinely add $10,000-$20,000 per year on top of tuition. A school with free tuition is not the same as a school with free college.
Compare net prices across school types. A private school with a $45,000 sticker price and a 56% discount may cost the same as a public school at full in-state rates. Use tools like TuitionFit to compare your financial aid award and see how it compares to others.
Consider the community college pathway. With 30+ states offering free tuition programs, starting at a community college and transferring can cut total degree costs nearly in half.
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Editor: Colin Graves
The post New Data: Colleges Now Discount Tuition 56% on Average — A Record High appeared first on The College Investor.
Direct link to offer
Tuesday & Wednesday travel only makes it difficult.
Hat tip to FM
AI is reshaping how work gets done, but not always for the better. More than half of U.S. employees say they’ve received “workslop” from a manager, raising new concerns about leadership standards and accountability. What is workslop? In Zety’s latest survey of 1,000 U.S. workers, workslop is defined as AI-generated work that looks polished but lacks accuracy, substance, or proper review.
Talent didn’t build this team. Culture did.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Vice Capital Markets, Better Mortgage and Wolters Kluwer are among companies adding new secondary market offerings, financing or related technology this week.
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Freddie has released two new types of low-loan balance 30-year mortgages that receive cash pay-ups, according to Vice Capital Markets, which has added the products to its system. The company also plans to add new cash pay-ups Fannie has in the works.
The Freddie mortgages, which have maximum balances of $450,000 and $425,000, have been incorporated into secondary market execution workflows lenders use to price and commit loans to the government-sponsored enterprises.
Freddie added
Vice Capital Markets also plans to make products on new 30-year commitment grids
“Speed to market matters in secondary, especially when new execution options become available,” Shawn Ansley, chief information officer at Vice Capital Markets, said in a press release.
In other news, Better Mortgage now has renewed all of its warehouse lines and increased capacity by over $275 million in the last three months, according to information Treasurer Rob Wilson provided in a company press release.
Most recently, Better has raised its total warehouse financing from $750 million to $850 million by increasing its capacity on an existing line, raising it from $250 million facility to $350 million.
A global investment firm is providing the facility, which Better renewed for a year. Better did not identify the name of the warehouse provider. A portion of the facility has committed terms, which call for the financing to remain in place for the full period so long as requirements are met.
“We are thankful to our lending partners for leaning into and doubling down on Better in a tough macro environment,” Vishal Garg, CEO and founder, said in the release.
Garg indicated that improved access to financing and cost of capital are priorities in the company’s recent earnings call.
“We continue to improve our warehouse terms while working to expand capacity to support partnership volume growth,” he said. “In parallel, we are working toward
Wolters Kluwer Financial & Corporate Compliance has added new access to its digital vault platform that provides warehouse banks and investors with a broader view of assets pledged to them.
This allows secured parties to get a single view across multiple customer vaults rather than accessing them individually.
Ron Jautz
“The rise in fraud and
Last week, in Queens, I met up with Infinite Machine CEO Joseph Cohen at his startup’s new vibey office space in Long Island City. After a brief tour, Cohen and I donned motorcycle helmets and went for a ride, spinning through the cobble and paved roads and bike lanes on Infinite Machines’ new e-bike, the Olto. The Olto is quick, fun, and smooth, and it was a blast.
As Cohen and I waited at a traffic light, people on the corner pointed at us, grinning. Olto’s sleek and modern design—like a Cybertruck for the bike lane—tends to grab attention. But is it really a bike?
The Olto follows all the technical parameters of a Class 2 e-bike, where you don’t need a license plate or registration, and it’s allowed in the bike lane. Legally, it’s a bike. In motion, it felt more like I was riding a moped. The Olto is a whopping 176 pounds, has a moped-style seat position, and uses a throttle that gets it up to 20 miles per hour—or more if you’re in a city like New York where higher speeds are allowed.
While there technically are pedals, Cohen advised me not to use them, and said that customers keep the pedals in the locked position—like pegs. Almost as proof of this, the chain on the Olto I rode was really rusty, and a piece of black plastic covered most of it, which I couldn’t help but notice would make the chain impossible to lube or service.
Courtesy of Infinite Machine
For Cohen, these quirks are exactly the point. He and his brother, Eddie, wanted to design a brand new kind of two-wheel transit option designed for both the road and the bike lane. The two spent a lot of time riding their Vespas during Covid, and Cohen says they realized “that two wheels is kind of a hack for New York.” Infinite Machine started manufacturing its first vehicle, an electric moped the P1, and later this e-bike Olto, which they started delivering to customers last year, though he wouldn’t tell me how many had been sold yet
Infinite Machine, which launched a moped motorcycle before the Olto, is already dabbling in what other kinds of vehicles it can build next—and how the startup could (eventually) plug in some sort of autonomy to its e-bikes and scooters. It’s a well-funded venture, with $14.2 million from investors including a16z’s American Dynamism fund (a little funny when you consider that Infinite Machine, like many transit companies, has its scooters and e-bikes assembled in Shenzhen, China). Cohen and his brother, Eddie are energetic and bubbly about their sleek designs and where they see the future of transit going. When you’re talking with them, it’s hard not to get excited right along with them.
At the same time, it’s hard to imagine Infinite Machine won’t run into some trouble as they scale. The e-mobility space is notoriously difficult and full of cautionary tales, but more than that, I wonder what the reaction will be from cyclists like me to have something like Olto passing them in the bike lane. At a speed of 20 or 25 miles per hour, a 176-pound bike carries much more energy than a traditional bicycle, and collisions don’t look the same. E-bike accidents are drawing additional scrutiny from residents in cities, including New York, where some groups are pushing for more parameters for e-bikes and scooters.
After thinking all of that over for a few days, I called up Cohen yesterday and asked about some of those concerns. He said that Infinite Machine is proactive with regulators and has built a “good relationship” with the New York City transportation department, and pointed out that he hadn’t heard of any complaints so far. From his perspective, he wants customers to ride in the bike lanes as a safety precaution from cars and dangerous drivers. “The real threat to safety is from cars and trucks, not from e-bikes,” he said.
Olto isn’t the only vehicle that may redefine the bike lane. Last week, I saw Amazon’s new four-wheel “e-cargo quadricycle” pedaling through the Lower East Side and making last-mile deliveries. It’s a stretch, but the enormous quadricycle technically meets all of the qualifications of a bike, even though it weighs many hundreds of pounds.
It’s hard not to feel that these new modes of transportation may erode the social order of the bike lane—the idea that bike lanes are solely for lower-speed vehicles and the commuters who are most vulnerable on the road. I’m a cyclist with four bikes—I use bike lanes all the time—and can’t help but wonder as some of these new designs get prolific, whether it could start to feel hostile to the people who are actually pedaling.
See you tomorrow,
Jessica Mathews
X: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com
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– E2, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based developer of medical technology designed for venous thromboembolism, raised $80 million in Series C funding. Gilde Healthcare and Norwest led the round and were joined by existing investors.
– True Footage, an Austin, Texas-based residential appraisal and appraiser services company, raised $40 million in Series C funding from Cox Enterprises, Nava Ventures, Roger Ferguson, Pilot Enterprises, and others.
– Membrane Technology & Research, a Newark, Calif.-based industrial membranes company, raised $27 million in Series B funding. Climate Investment led the round and was joined by Hartree Partners.
– HexemBio, a New York City-based biotech company focused on blood stem cell rejuvenation therapy, raised $10.4 million in seed funding. Draper Associates led the round and was joined by SOSV, Seraphim, and others.
– CONXAI, a Munich, Germany-based agentic AI platform designed to automate construction workflows, raised €5 million in pre-Series A funding. BayBG Venture Capital and Capricorn Partners led the round and were joined by Pi Labs, Earlybird, Noa, Zacua Ventures, and Argonautic Ventures.
– FLORA Fertility, a Calgary, Canada-based fertility insurance platform, raised $5 million in seed funding. ManchesterStory led the round and was joined by Slauson & Co., BDC, Marathon Fund, and Adara Venture Partners.
– Felix, a Prague, Czech Republic-based AI workflow platform designed for legal, finance, and insurance professionals, raised $1.7 million in pre-seed funding. XYZ Venture Capital led the round and was joined by angel investors.
– Prism Layer, a Washington, D.C.-based AI-powered platform for enterprise risk management, raised $1 million in pre-seed funding. Fenway Summer led the round and was joined by Plural VC and others.
– Bay Collective, backed by Sixth Street, agreed to acquire Sunderland AFC Women, a Sunderland, U.K.-based women’s soccer club. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– Caylent, backed by Gryphon Investors, acquired Pronetx, a Columbia, Md.-based customer experience consulting firm. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– First Reserve acquired a majority stake in Lindsey Systems, an Azusa, Calif.-based designer and manufacturer of electric transmission and distribution equipment. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– Gamut Capital Management agreed to acquire Acousti Engineering Company, an Orlando, Fla.-based ceiling, drywall, flooring, and specialty interior services provider, from Ardian. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– Triton Partners agreed to acquire Integris, an Amsterdam, The Netherlands-based ballistic protection company, from Agilitas Private Equity. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– Eclipse, a Palo Alto, Calif. and New York City-based venture capital firm, raised $1.3 billion across two funds focused on companies in physical industries.
– 500 Global, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capital firm, hired Nadia Karkar as managing partner. Previously, she was with TPG Rise.
– H.I.G. Capital, a Miami, Fla.-based private equity firm, promoted Brian Schwartz to CEO.
– Rally Ventures, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture capital firm, hired Liz Benz as operating partner. Previously, she was Chief Sales Officer at Jamf.
