Busted, Broken, and Leaky: Fixing America’s Education-to-Workforce Pipeline

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[00:00:31] Hey everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, President of CareerClub. Welcome to another episode of The Work Wire where I'm joined by my good friend and co-host, the president and CEO of SHRM, the one and the only, Johnny C. Taylor Jr. Johnny, how are you today? Well, I survived it. I know we're going to talk about a topic today that's been a crazy month, let's call it that, since the inauguration and lots going on, but I'm doing really well. I'm optimistic.

[00:00:57] Yep. So on a previous episode, we had talked about some of the new, but just sort of the whole Trump phenomenon and everything that's been going on. But, you know, one of the things that you had the opportunity to do was testify in front of the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce in early February.

[00:01:18] Right. And for anybody who's listening or watching this, I would really encourage you to go to YouTube, just YouTube, Johnny Taylor, SHRM, Congressional Testimony, you'll find it. And you were one of four or five witnesses, I think. Four, I think. Yeah. And different perspectives on different aspects of, you know, where education in the United States is headed. And they're obviously advocating for some policy changes or at least direction.

[00:01:43] And I thought yours was so on point and really kind of transcends politics. It transcends one administration or one four-year term. You really got at how education ties to the workforce. And I think you had two or three or four levers that could be pulled or that you guys are advocating for. I think this is awesome. This touches every family.

[00:02:12] This literally touches every family who might be listening to this. It's got children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, friends, whoever. Like everybody connects to the education system and then ultimately that connects to the workplace. And so I don't want to set this up more than that. Do you mind kind of just sharing why you were invited, what the remit for your testimony was? And then we'll start to get into what some of the main points were.

[00:02:42] Yeah. So you're invited because SHRM is the world's largest HR association. Well, there's that. A little detail. So it was actually SHRM invited and I happened to be the CEO of SHRM at the time. But we were really, it was because of our position as a trusted advisor to both governments, no matter who the president was, whether it was Biden. We had such a role. I gave Senate testimony during the Biden presidency.

[00:03:09] And now I'm giving House testimony during the Trump presidency and hope to see him a lot more. So it's because the business world, we like to say CEOs, politicos and CHROs. And politicos are those elected or appointed officials who will determine what policies will be. Trust us. And they know that SHRM is not going to play even bipartisanship. We're going to play nonpartisanship.

[00:03:38] We're going to bring you really good data and the data will inform whatever decision the politicos decide. They can decide to ignore the data and go a different way for political reasons. But we sure as heck are going to tell them what the data tells us. So that's why we're invited. What was interesting is, you're right, there were ultimately four witnesses of what we're referred to on our panel. And one woman was just phenomenal in her own right.

[00:04:02] She's a subject matter expert in K through 12 education and has a bend toward, you know, the idea of choice when it comes to educational opportunities, school choice, parental choice, whatever you want to call it. So that's her world. And she lives in that and has had a really compelling case for why that matters.

[00:04:23] The gentleman next to her happened to be from the American Enterprise Institute, professor, PhD, academic, I should say. Very, very steeped in a lot of the data that speaks to what works and what doesn't work and what hasn't worked. So really good because he had great data, really good, deep technical data.

[00:04:46] And then the person sitting right next to me headed the CEO of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who again has kept all of us kind of honest or tried to with respect to how these things play out in communities that have historically been underrepresented and underfunded and underserved. So she came with a point of view around that.

[00:05:08] And then ultimately, Sherm was, as you rightly asked the question, and I've used this example in the past, if you think of PK, which is pre-kindergarten, through 16, which is college, that entire period during which the United States government funds higher education.

[00:05:28] Again, PK through 16, if you think about it, and some higher than 16, because you go to medical schools, graduate schools, et cetera, and student loans are supported by the federal government. If you think about it, that's the manufacturing process. That is the federal government saying we are going to build a product, an educated and informed workforce. Employers consume that product. So we are the buyers.

[00:05:56] You know, if you're making a Tesla, then there's a customer on the other end. And for too long, what's happened is the manufacturers of the product have told us buyers, this is what you get. Period. We don't care what you want. We don't care what you need. This is what you're going to get. And we employers would take the product and then change the wheels because the wheel wasn't big enough. Change the type of brake because the brake that they created wasn't a brake that can stop fast enough.

[00:06:25] Or, you know, so we were constantly modifying on the back end, although we had paid for that education, that system on the other side. So I know that's a really interesting metaphor or maybe a little complicated and nuanced. But the idea is you had the people who were building the product not speaking to or even caring in some instances about what the consumer of that product thought and wanted. And there was a disconnect.

[00:06:55] So I referred to our system as just being broken and busted and leaking. And it was intended to not inflame people because I'm not anti-education or anti-teacher or anti-public education. I'm not anti-anything. It was to say the results are clear that after all of that investment on behalf of the federal taxpayers and the K-12 system states as well,

[00:07:21] what we get on the other end is employers are saying it's not good. Your product is not good. And so we're looking at bringing this talent in from outside of the country after all of this investment or outsourcing the work outside of the country to places that do give us a better product and can help us do our work. And that's not a good thing. It's not good for taxpayers. It's not good for people who want to work, Americans who want to work. And it's not good for employers. Yeah. Wow. So what did you say?

[00:07:50] Busted, broken and leaky. Leaky. Right. Yeah. And so people, I got so many that's like, hey, Johnny, that was pretty direct because it is. This is now no longer the time to be subtle in your messaging. Again, as long as it's clear, no one, Sherman, no one else is attacking public schools or attaching, attacking teachers because, of course, that is the profession. God bless them. None of that. It's just saying, by definition, what we're doing is not working.

[00:08:20] And to keep doing it is lunacy. Well, let me ask you this, John. Just be devil's advocate for higher ed for a second. But what we're there, you know, and this is why you guys require college degrees is, you know, there's a level of cognitive ability, right? That you're able to do higher order education work. There's a persistence because it wasn't just sort of like a four week boot camp.

[00:08:46] You had like grinded out for four years to get that degree or longer if you're getting more education. And so we feel like we're preparing, you know, the raw material for you guys and to go shape to what you need. What's wrong with that?

[00:09:02] Well, so except that in many instances you prepared this raw material and sent them to us expecting $100,000 salary so that they could service their $200,000 in student debt. Like you got to look at the whole thing, right? And so that kid has to work two jobs, maybe three. And we're saying we're not getting the right return.

[00:09:28] If you sent us a fully functioning, high operating, high operation, then we would be good because it would justify the investment. But you haven't. What you have is kids stuck with a ton of student loans who come to us. And frankly, we have to train them up more or worst case, they've got a $200,000 price tag or debt for their undergraduate degree. And we say, you know what? You're still not ready on the technical skills. So you need to go back and get a graduate degree.

[00:09:56] So now you'll up another $150,000, $200,000 on debt on top of them and saying we as employers like we're never going to pay you enough to service that debt. We just can't. That's not your path for us. So that's the problem is stuck in the middle of this is you have kids, oftentimes, who are first generation or who are coming from really financially struggling homes who bet their house, literally.

[00:10:21] Grandma's house, mom's house on this education, making things better so they can break the cycle. They come to us. They're not ready. We aren't ready and frankly, in some instances, able to invest more. And so the kid loses and those families lose. So this is an American problem. This is not it's it's literally something we've got to rethink. And so. Is it technical?

[00:10:49] And I mean, technical, just in the technology sense, but functionally technical, like I know how to do this work, like if I get an accounting degree, I probably can do some accounting coming right out of school. But if I got an English degree, a history degree, not just liberal arts. I mean, maybe even a marketing degree where I've been familiarized with some of the principles of marketing, but I've never actually really done any of it. Is that where they're falling down? Is it critical thinking skills?

[00:11:18] Because in theory, that's what education teach you how to think. Right. Even if you don't know everything, there's a difference. But I know how to problem solve. I know how to innovate and how to be creative. Like, are you not even getting that coming out of college? So bluntly, no, it's not what it used to be. So let's break down some of the things you've described. Critical thinking. Critical thinking skills at a minimum require that you can come into a situation and analyze deeply something.

[00:11:47] And separate your personal beliefs or your personal passions from the situation and someone who might see it differently. We are seeing literally kids are coming out of higher educational systems with one point of view. Actually, when it comes to diversity, and I'm not talking about race, gender, national origin. I'm talking thinking. When you talk about critical thinking, they simply cannot.

[00:12:13] If you challenge them on ideas, they take it personal. So that's a failure of a system that allows you to only believe one way, a right or wrong. Not suggesting there are not some rights and wrongs, but I'm saying that. So the critical thinking. The second area. Basic being able to work with others. Too often the system is so focused.

[00:12:36] The K-16 system is so focused on the individual that when they come into the workplace, and you and I know we're now in the relationship economy. If you can't interact with other people, if you can't collaborate with other people, if you don't get along with other people, then you can't do what we need you to do. And so that's another space where I think K-12 education or K-16 is not delivering in the way it used to be. It's suboptimal.

[00:13:05] It's not horrible because, as I said to the congresspersons in attendance that day, America is still the best system of them all. I fundamentally believe and I'm proud to be our country. So being critical of something, constructively critical, is different than being destructively critical. What we're trying to do here is give constructive feedback through that educational system so that the outcome is a product that we all like. Another area, though, is writing. And I hear this constantly.

[00:13:34] Basic ability to write is gone in part because of social media and kids write. You should see the vocabulary, have a 14-year-old daughter. And I'm like, no, you learn from habit. And if you develop bad habits in writing, it shows up in your from, you know, your tweets or whatever. It shows up. You don't spell words out. You don't know punctuation, know anything.

[00:13:56] And when I hire you and I ask you to send a two paragraph note to our your fellow colleagues and it is filled with errors, grammatical errors, syntax errors, et cetera, then write. We as employers are bothered by that. And that is part of what we're getting. And then finally, and I want to allude to this is being able to I've already suggested, but I'm going to be being able to work with people who are different is something that is really a challenge.

[00:14:25] And I'm not blaming our systems because there's a number of reasons why you spend more time being educated with people who are like you. But then all of a sudden you come out and you come into a workplace that is incredibly diverse, globally diverse. And I'm, again, not just talking about those categories that we know race, gender, national origin, but just religion, political affiliation, all sorts of things. We have a lot of folks who simply cannot operate well in a truly diverse environment.

[00:14:55] So these are just some of the things that we are trying to get K through 12 systems to do better. And then, of course, forget it all. It isn't all traditional higher ed college. We talked about this in the beginning. We want people to do the trades, too. So they need skills like you've got to be able to do stuff. I just had a problem here at my home, a tree that looked like it was going to crash into my house. And I was just waiting for one windstorm to take my roof out.

[00:15:24] The person who showed up is not college-degreed, but there's some really interesting algebra and physics work that they were doing to take a tree down that was leaning at my house and make it go that way. So as you're bringing it down, you've got to make sure it doesn't crash into my roof. So just that ability to problem solve and to physically go out there in 32-degree weather and keep your mind about you so that you are protecting my property and you're making a good living in the process.

[00:15:53] Again, we need all of those jobs filled. And that's why when you talk about a system, PK through 16, every element is going to the way. Every kid's not going to go to Harvard and be a doctor or lawyer. And, you know, it's not the way it works. But there are roles for every person. We've got to figure out how to give them the skills so that they can come here and sort it. I got to tell you, last funny, funny. So I go in to get my once-a-week fast food splurge, right?

[00:16:20] And it happens to be that on the right side of my street, someone hit a transformer, all of the electricity was out. So I drive up. And this is a true story. This was now about a week and a half, two weeks ago. I drive up and I order my favorite guilty pleasure, which is a Big Mac meal. Yes, I did that for you, McDonald's. And I order this meal. And, you know, it's like $9.29. I give the person at the window a $10 bill.

[00:16:45] Could not figure out that they put the 71 cents to save their lives. Just could not do that math in their head. And I was like, oh, my gosh. So, yes, fundamental problem. And electricity happened to be out in this area. You can check it. Washington, D.C. area. It was Alexandria, Virginia. It was out for like four or five hours. So I just imagine how much money they lost that day because this kid could not do basic, basic math. Wow.

[00:17:14] And the problem, if you think about how it impacts us. So we're not just talking about high-end, high-specialty, life-saving physicians. I'm talking about a person who's basically working. You know, you can't do basic math. That's a problem. That is a huge problem. And so a couple of things. One is the dissatisfaction with higher education starts to push people to, do we need to even have that as a criterion anymore?

[00:17:43] Or maybe we just drop that. I think that's what you're saying, by the way. Requiring a college degree? Some jobs require. Oh, 100%, but some don't. Right? And that's been an artificial hurdle that's been in people's place. And you look at the dissatisfaction with what I'm getting by having that requirement. It's like, all right. But then the other piece, and I think this is in your testimony, but don't let me create a falsehood here.

[00:18:13] Is it the investment in vocational education and trade schools is actually down? Yes. And we've got all these boomers who are retiring that know how to fix stuff, build stuff, do stuff. And there's not a pipeline of people that are learning how to take your tree down, fix your brakes, fix your air conditioner, do whatever needs to be done, build a house. Yep. Am I remembering that correctly?

[00:18:42] Oh, you're spot on. And that's our fault. Again, I think the system, remember, people forget the Department of Education. It was a big debate over whether or not the president had the right to destroy or eliminate the Department of Education. I refuse to get involved in that because it's clear he doesn't. No president does. You have this thing called Congress that you've got to work with, right, to make this happen. And so it's basic.

[00:19:03] But I think people don't realize that most of the Department of Education's focus is on higher education, which means colleges and universities. And frankly, historically, it's filled with academics and not knocking academics. But there's an elitism that says, I have a college degree. You need one. And you don't just need one. You need two or three. And you need them from the right schools. Right? So that's how the system was built.

[00:19:29] And we poo-pooed, actually looked down upon kids who said, I'm going to go get a trade. I'm going to go to a junior college, as we would call it back in the day now called community colleges. Or the kid who said, I'm just going to go to the military. And they forget that we enjoy all of our freedoms because of that kid who decided to go march into war and fight for our freedoms while we're back here. So I think the system got out of kilter. Right?

[00:19:55] And a lot of those practical skills you did get during military, if you went to the military. You came back. You could do stuff, like fix stuff. And those are where the system so focused on bachelor's degrees and master's degrees and doctorates and just proliferating. We now have 5,000 or so higher educational institutions. And people are taking out debt. And they have parent plus loans that if it's not enough debt for the kid, then your parents and your grandparents can take on debt for you.

[00:20:24] It just is a mistake. Now, again, I want to make the point that you kind of smiled about. I'm not anti-college. In fact, I want my kid to go to college. My son did. And I'm hoping that my daughter follows in the footsteps. But that is assuming she wants a job to do that. I am perfectly fine saying to her there are a lot of jobs where if you want to be a cosmetologist, you don't need to go off four years of college and a master's to go do that.

[00:20:52] If this is what your gift is and this is what your passion is about, then let's figure out how to give you the appropriate level of higher education. Yep. And by the way, employers would love that, by the way. They would just love that. Why over-educate someone to do something that this is what they want to spend their lives doing? Well, and it's interesting, too, because I think we're seeing that enrollment in college is going down, not up. That's right.

[00:21:17] And so, you know, college is kind of – I mean, hopefully this is the wake-up call because they've got both a demand problem on both sides of their factory. Yeah. Right? I don't want to buy what you're selling. And employers don't want to buy what you're selling. And it's like, all right, and that becomes a problem. So they are going to have to accommodate. But one of the other points that you made that I want to make sure that we don't lose time for is all the untapped talent pools. Right?

[00:21:46] So I think, you know, sometime during the pandemic, right after the pandemic, there were twice as many job openings as there were, you know, applicants, right? And people looking for work. Now, I think that's closer to one-to-one if it's not even a little bit below water right now that there's, you know, fewer openings and there are people looking. Yet at the same time, there are some fields that are still, like, highly understaffed, highly understaffed.

[00:22:17] And, again, we can't forget what I think used to be called the silver tsunami. That's right. You know, these people that, you know, are deciding they want to go, you know, enjoy the rest of their lives, not at work. And yet really large groups of talent are being overlooked. You mentioned military a minute ago, right? But we've got, you know, boomers who retired and want to go back to work. Boomers who never retired and want to keep working. You've got, what do you call it?

[00:22:45] You don't say disabled. The alternative. Differently able. Differently able, thank you. You know, some people with a criminal record. Right. And then opportunity youth, they're not in school, but they're not working. Right. They're just a little bit, you know, directionless right now. But we just listed tens of millions of people who are fellow country persons who would benefit from working, want to work.

[00:23:13] How did you kind of weave that into the narrative in your testimony? So we call them untapped pools of talent. That's the phrase that we use because it doesn't make them responsible for themselves and their condition, their work status. The reality is we have a labor participation rate problem in America. Americans just are not working at the rates that they have historically worked.

[00:23:40] And what we have to ask ourselves is, is this because people don't want to work? There's some people who just don't want to work. And that gets to all sorts of social entitlement systems, et cetera, whatever. But there are a lot of people who do want to work. And they're falling into a couple of problems. They're having a couple of problems. Number one, there is a bias, as you pointed out, for people who don't have traditional backgrounds and educational, you know, bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, whatever.

[00:24:08] So there's a little bit of bias on the HR side and hiring manager side, where if you don't have a degree, you're not worth looking at. But we're helping solve for that. That'll solve some of it. The second part of it, which is bigger, and it actually is bigger, is the skills gap. It's a real look. You can want to work. You can be ready, willing, but not able to do the work we need you to do. Or, say it differently, willing and able, but not ready.

[00:24:36] However you want to put it, at the end of the day, there are people who want to do jobs for which they are not skilled to do the jobs. And to me, that was the biggest message we were trying to deliver to members of Congress, is if Johnny wants to go to work to be a plumber, but Johnny has no plumbing skills, then what you've got to do is make their available to him. It's in the best interest of our country, by the way.

[00:24:59] This isn't just for Johnny, it's for our country, because when Johnny or Mary's toilet goes, she needs a plumber to show up in less than three weeks, right? So what we need to do is take Johnny and show him a pathway to being the plumber, not just say there are 10 million people available. Why don't some of them just go be plumbers and fill those open jobs? They don't have the skills to do it.

[00:25:21] So that's a big part of the conversation is, as we think about whatever the Department of Education is going to do for the next four years, working alongside the Department of Labor. Labor will tell you how many plumbing jobs we have. Society will tell you how many people are willing to do those jobs. We just need education to bridge that gap. It just it's so simple that it should figure the last category of those that we've got to overcome is just our own bias, not against higher ed, but for people who have been out.

[00:25:50] Maybe it's a woman who took five years off to get her kids from through and into school. OK, and she stepped out of the system intentionally and now wants to come back in. We've got to deal with our own biases, our biases against people who are differently abled, our biases against someone who made a mistake, served their time and now wants to work. That's another big problem. So you've got three big blocks.

[00:26:17] Yes, there's the education bias for higher education. Got it. The biggest issue I think can continue to be is the skills problem and skills gap on both sides. Right. We want what you don't have and you don't know how to get it, even if you're willing to do it. And then that big one, which is our own sort of biases against different types of people. If we could solve for those three, you won't eliminate the problem. But my gosh, we put a lot of Americans back to work.

[00:26:46] Last week, a couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak to a cohort of people that were going through a tech boot camp. Yes. Learning technical in demand. And, you know, and I like how they say this, not living wages, but thriving wages. Yes. And it was such an honor, Johnny, to get to go talk to them because what I said, and I say this every time I do this whole session on career coaching with these folks, is, you know, you're doing three really important things.

[00:27:15] You're changing your own life. Like you are creating new possibilities for yourself. You're just changing what the arc of your life can look like, which is amazing. But by definition, that extends to your family. Right. And now families, you know, have a new reality because your mom or dad or brother, sister, whoever has this different kind of a job and works at AWS or works at wherever they're working. And they have a phenomenal job.

[00:27:42] But I think the most important piece is that it also changes the community. That's right. And all of a sudden you can start to see what's possible. Well, did you see what Susan is doing? She just got a dream cloud computing and she's working at, you know, that big company, not working, you know, cleaning hotel rooms or working, you know, at some minimum wage job. And it's like that starts to really show what's possible.

[00:28:09] And I think when we can provide more skills training, and this is cool about Praskolis, it's free to the learner. Got to live. Right. And so like as long as you're ready and willing, they'll make you able. That's right. Right. But you got to go through the thing. You got to get your credentials. But then you are now ready to be in the workforce. Like, how do you go multiply that many, many times? Well, that's what we were talking about.

[00:28:39] So it was fascinating. That's why it was the education and workforce. That's a beautiful labor. Because the idea is you've got to have both sides of that. You just nailed it. I will say in our, just as we think about this, we also have to be really careful about these programs because there's a new competitor. And the new competitor, there are actually two new competitors. One is newer than the other. One is AI. I really do worry about some of the jobs. You mentioned accounting earlier.

[00:29:08] Well, there are a lot of folks who have great accounting degrees that AI is just going to make those jobs go away. They're going to be obsolete. That whole set of skills. So we've got to, you know, I worry about that threat. And I want to make sure workers understand that. Particularly people who are in there, call it 40s, 50s. They were taught accounting will be around forever. I'm not so sure. That's right. Okay. So that's number one. The other threat is that we're a flat world now.

[00:29:37] And talent can, you know, I talked about this on a long, long conference, actually three years ago during the pandemic, when an employee would say, I can work from anywhere. And I'd say, you better think about what you're saying. Because if you say you can work from anywhere, that means I can hire anywhere. Right? It doesn't mean I need to have an American in Miami versus D.C. I don't have to have you here at all. Then I can hire you as someone to do this work at a fraction of your cost.

[00:30:05] So there's the machine that's a threat, AI, the technology. And then they're just in a flat world. There's a country over there called India with 1.45 billion people. Right? And they will do what you do for a lot less than you do. And potentially better. They're just more proficient. So it's like it's a world that you and I, Bob, can't fully relate to that your threat is a machine and another person on another part of the world.

[00:30:37] So, no, but see, and we need to be cognizant of the time. But where that starts to take things is you talk about this a lot. But how do you add value? How do you add value? And if we're in a relationship economy, which I like, then it's like, well, then you need to be and you need to be seen. You need to do things, not just sort of the task, but how do you more holistically add value to your employer?

[00:31:05] And I think one of the things that we don't talk about, too, is there's a whole spectrum of ways of being employed. Right? Not everything is a W-2 job. Right? I don't have a W-2. Right? I started my own thing. That's right. Okay. And have fancy rooms all over the Caribbean. That's right. Yeah. You can be easy. You can have gig workers, fractional, you know, CHRO fractional anything. Right?

[00:31:36] You can be contract. You can acquire a business. Right? Again, with all these boomers who don't have an exit strategy for their electrical supply business. Well, who's going to come in and take that over? That was their retirement. And they don't have a kid that wants it. Or they don't want to give it to their kid or whatever. So there's so many ways of kind of solving for what work looks like for people. But I think, you know, you used the term change management earlier.

[00:32:05] I think part of it from the employer's perspective is change management and being open to like these untapped talent pools. And this doesn't look like we've always hired, comma, and that's okay. In fact, if you really do believe in IND, it could actually be preferable. I agree. Right? And so, you know, it's a new world. It's changing. You know, we've talked about this. The pace of change and the magnitude of change.

[00:32:35] Today is the slowest day of the rest of our lives. I love when you say that. So if you think that, you know, this is just going to be one big, slow, straight line, that is not happening. And so it's, you know, again, I appreciate the work that you do, Johnny. I appreciate you going and educating politicos with data. Right? Not just, you know, your heart on your sleeve. And I just feel passionately about this. It's like, guys, this is reality. This is like, like, read the data. This is where things are going.

[00:33:05] And if we can do more of that and not just be sort of bound by positions, but, you know, be motivated by promise and what's forward. Like, I am super optimistic. So, you know, your testimony was very articulate. Your other panelists made their cases very well. Right? And you guys had a big audience. That was not just some little small hearing on C-SPAN.

[00:33:32] Like, there were a lot of people at that thing paying attention and asking hard questions. Yes. And so I appreciate what you did. I appreciate that, you know, you're busted, broken, and leaky. Let's call it what it is because you can't fix a problem until you acknowledge what the problem is. But you guys show up with solutions, too. And, again, I appreciate what you articulated there and, you know, encourage you to please keep doing that. Well, I appreciate that, man. And great to see you on the work wire. Great to be seen.

[00:34:02] Thank you, everybody, for listening and watching. And we hope to see you on the next episode. See you soon. Bye-bye. Thank you, sir. Bye-bye. Check out Career.Club for personalized help with your job search. Visit SHRM.org to become part of the largest human resources organization worldwide. Thank you, Mark. - start with you, Mark. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. Bye -bye.