boeing is gradually increasing 737 max production as you take a look at shares of boeing that is a very gradual ramp. we'll not see completed aircraft coming out morgan, we'll hop back into this hearing. we'll let you know what else steve dickson has to say as they question him about the faa oversighted of the max morgan >> all right phil lebeau, thanks for bringing us the latest on that. good wednesday and "to "squawk alley. a quick look at the markets right now. it's a mixed morning for the major averages everything is fractionally -- >> we're having a little trouble with your audio, so i will grab it as morgan was mentioning, the major indexes are fractionally higher, trying to make their fourth straight positive session. that's where we'll start major averages now kind of treading water we'll see where they go from

here joining us is chief investment officer of the minnesota state board of investment. good morning. >> good morning, john. how are you? >> i'm doing pretty well i hope you are, too. so, a lot of people trying to figure out what to do with this market your philosophy is to buy the market and not individual equities but this market has been kind of funky i wonder does big tech's increasing waiting say in s&p 500 concern you? how do you get as diversified as you want to be >> no. as i said, i mentioned before, we don't look at sector by sector we've been long-term investors and for the most part we buy the market you know, domestically we own the russell 3,000. we do have active managers, but the vast majority of our portfolio is passively managed our equity portfolio is passively managed, same on the international side

so we probably have most stocks that are available to us. >> that's done pretty well for you. i wonder with this disconnect between the economy and the market that we're seeing does that cause you to shift at all your portfolio allocation? do you have more than usual in cash does fixed income mean the same thing that it traditionally did? >> well, that's something that we have been talking about for quite some time. as i said, we won't shift the portfolio very much, but most people look at us and believe our business is to make the most money as possible. i try to point out that our primary goal is to satisfy our pension obligations. and that requires that we have the necessary liquidity every month to ensure that we can meet pension benefit payments we have been restructuring our

mixed income portfolio the last couple years it's now comprised of half the portfolio is treasuries which has paid us off very well the last couple years. it's been surprisingly our -- the last year our best performing asset class but we've been focussing more to ensure that we've got the adequate liquidity while we're able to continue to maintain the growth bias that we've had for so many years that's paid us off extremely well we're proud to say in the realm of large public pension plans in the u.s., that we've been a top performer for 30-plus years. >> yeah. i'm back i have to say this is the joys of working from home sometimes your internet signal drops out, but it's great to speak with you today i'm curious about the private

markets portion of your portfolio. i think it comprises, what, 16% of the overall portfolio it's been a source of strength for you in recent years. how would you assess private markets right now? where would you be putting money to work? how would you compare that to some of these public markets that we've been talking about? >> well, we've always liked private equity we've been private equity investors since 1981 that's paid off very well. private markets, which for us is predominantly private equity for quite some time. we were very large energy investors. we're kind of waning off of that now for a variety of reasons but of late we have been doing more direct lending to go along with mezzanine investing we have done over the years. and we've not much as much in real estate. prior to the pandemic we have been giving considerable thought

to increasing what we do there we've been predominantly u.s.-focussed in our private market portfolio we believe that we need to have greater global exposure there. we like private markets. i've really been a fan of private equity more so than public equity. a lot of that has to do with the agency principle i look at when i play in with public markets, you know, people who are select in stocks are agents, but they're really agents. whereby in private markets our gps are principalprincipals they've got better alignment with us. they have much more control over what happens with companies than public. >> yeah. and of course in a week where the fed is very much in focus, you have chair powell testifying on the hill for a second day in a row today.

i wonder how you see monetary policy playing out in the market more broadly right now do you feel like it is buoying the market and what do you make of things like buying of corporate bonds? >> well, obviously my buddy pointed out to me several times don't fight the fed. i believe that there's a great disconnect now between what is happening in the stock market versus the economy but when one looks back, i know i kind of carry around a cheat sheet with me and the stock market particularly in the u.s. has been pretty resilient over the last 40 years, i think there's only been 7 years where there's been a negative return vast majority of the annual returns that we receive from the

stock market have been double digit. so, >>. >> given what you just said and your bias towards domestic stocks, talk to me about strategy in international markets. because just recently -- yesterday, the imf said that the current crisis is unlike anything the world has seen before you're looking at increasing your exposure to international markets. how do you do that safely? >> well, with public markets we're not increasing our exposure we have had a long-term home country bias in public markets. >> yeah. but even private given what's happening on the ground to the economy in these places, how can you be sure or at least relatively stable confident in your investments in international markets? >> well, there are no

guarantees i've had a long belief that much of particularly emerging markets that in public markets we're not really receiving the benefit so the economic growth that's taking place in most of those venues and we believe that there may be better potential in private markets there. but for the most part, we will continue to have a pretty strong u.s. bias either public or private markets. but, we would like to think that we're global investors, but you know, given the strength of the dollar and as i was talking before the resiliency we have seen over the past four-plus decades, that the u.s. is pretty good place to -- pretty good place to be. >> yeah. hard sometimes to take that advice we always get about have a diversified portfolio, international stocks, et cetera, given what's been happening. mansco perry, the chief

investment officer of the minnesota state board of investment thank you for being with us. >> thank you meantime, mark zuckerberg out with an op ed announcing new changes for facebook users julia has the latest on that >> morgan, that's right. mark zuckerberglaying out his plan to make facebook a positive force in american politics after the manipulation that happened on the platform around the 2016 election in a usa today op-ed zuckerberg announcing the plan to register 4 million voters ahead of this coming election, double the number registered in 2016 and 201. zuckerberg unveiling a voting information center hub to explain how to register, vote by mail and how to vote early this hub will appear at the top of the facebook and instagram apps zuckerberg saying between july and november, he expects more than 160 million people in the u.s. to see information on facebook about how to vote calling this the largest voting

information campaign in american history. he also announced that all of facebook's users will have the ability to turn off political advertising. this comes after zuckerberg drew criticism for defending the company's decision to allow political ads that contain false information. saying allowing political ads is in the interest of free speech, not profits. now, in contrast, twitter last fall banned all political advertising. with so much scrutiny on facebook's power coming from washington, including on going ftc anti-trust inquiry, the pressure is on for facebook to not just prevent voter manipulation but also show it can be transparent and actually help democracy zuckerberg saying that they are prepared to prevent election interference that they have been investing billions of dollars to sure up the platform here he is trying to play offense on this issue. back over to you. >> julia, did you read anything into mark zuckerberg's multiple mentions of voting by mail in that op-ed, given the president's tweets that tried to

call into question the integrity of the vote by mail system >> yes i think what's happening right now is there's a lot of concern about voter suppression. and zuckerberg wants to make sure that facebook is not part of that and if anything is really going to prevent voter suppression. and i think that as we've seen with people still being stuck at home, stay-at-home orders, not only remaining in many parts of the country but also the concern that stay-at-home orders will come back if there's a second wave, especially around voting time, i think he wants to get ahead of that. i think zuckerberg wants to get ahead of that and make sure they're laying the ground work for transparent, safe, voting from home if people can't actually make it to the polls. >> interesting maybe a position somewhat different than the president's julia, thank you. still to come, nysc president stacey cunningham joins us on the othesi or def the break. stay with us for the life behind every mask

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welcome back to "squawk alley. the new york stock exchange allowing more market makers back to its trading floor this morning. just over three weeks since reopening began. meantime, both the nyse and nasdaq registering a win in federal court yesterday in a ruling that some fee increases can't be challenged by the government after they have taken effect here is what s.e.c. chair told us about that ruling in the last hour >> we have responsibility to ensure that our trading markets

and our trading venues operate in a way where people are getting the right deal that competition is driving prices to where, you know, our end users, our investors, aren't paying too much for liquidity. they're not paying too much to get in and out that's our job our market structure is highly complex. i respect that decision. but it just shows that we're going to have to look at different ways to get data so that we can make sure, it's our job, we can make sure that the markets are functioning in a way that's appropriate for our long-term investors. >> joining us now nyse president stacey cunningham. thanks for being here today. great to have you with us. >> thanks, morgan. it's great to be here. >> i want to get your response to that comment we just heard from the s.e.c. chairman >> yeah. i think first off, it's important to recognize taking a step back that i have tremendous respect for the s.e.c. we have a great working

relationship and we workvery productively o so many different issues around capital formation, around trading in the markets, chairman clayton and his team, director redfern have been really focal advocates of great support system through all the volatility that we have seen through march. we worked very, very well together to make sure that our markets continue to deliver and operate the way investors expect them to through any kind of market conditions like we've seen that said, there are certain areas where we disagreed on policy decisions that the s.e.c. was making and how we were going to experiment with some of the market models. retail investors have it better than they had it before, but it's true there's a lot of complexity and fragmentation in our markets today and institutional investors have more -- it's a more challenging environment for them to be able to trade and execute securities. so there is cause for discussion and review to enhance our markets and improve them the pilot that was being proposed didn't actually

accomplish the job of measuring those conflicts of interest. there is data already available out there to do that secondly, it just was outside of the regulatory authority of the s.e.c., so we tried to propose an alternative and come up with another solution we'll continue to do that. we'll continue to work with the industry on alternatives but the one that was being passed by the s.e.c. was outside of their authority under the exchange act we ended up challenging it in court and i was glad to see the courts agree >> yeah. so, when you talk about alternatives or coming up with a solution, what could that potentially look like? i ask because i realize this could get really wonky really quickly for tv, but what could that potentially look like whether you're talking about fees for data or even if you're talking about say connectivity and the ability to move faster, execute a trade faster, i got to think that that actually benefits bigger players with deeper pockets how do you basically level the playing field to ensure that everybody can participate in an equal way? >> yeah. i think one of the things to recognize is when the policy

decisions were made to promote competition in the markets, it led to fragmentation what that led to was better prices for investors as variable costs went down, but fixed costs went up. as people are connecting to more and more places to execute trades so, it's gotten more expensive for industry professionals so main street has done better, but wall street is paying more money. what we can do is find -- recognize the fact that there is a correlation between both fixed costs and variable costs and come up with a solution where we can reduce the overall fees on the industry without putting different companies into different buckets. that certainly something the listed companies at the nyc weren't in favor of. there were dozens of letters written through the s.e.c. comment process opposing the pilot. so we looked at all of those letters. we came up with what we think is a good compromise. we had suggested as an alternative. we can dust that off now that the courts have made their decision and see if there's more industry support now to take that route that would lower the transaction fees and reduce the scale of potential conflicts

>> hey, stacey good morning it's john fort good to see the familiar look of the floor and see you and here beeps and boops in the background we don't get to hear that as much as we used to when you were first opening the floor back up a few weeks ago, you said there were no timetable for bringing more people or everyone back. is that still the case >> yeah, not a specific timetable, but we're moving to phase 2 this week where we increased the number of people that can come back, bringing back some of the market makers we're scaling it up. importantly we have been open three and a half weeks we put in place a number of protective measures. we have seen no cases, no positive cases as we have been testing people that come in either randomly or because of our screening process. and what we're learning is if you act responsibly, we can protect each other i've been really disheartened by seeing some of the videos and footage of people in places that are reopening going back to

normal and not acknowledging the fact that we still have a pandemic and we need to be responsible with our actions so, if you do that, you can scale up that's what we're doing. we're scaling up but responsibly. >> so how do you do that as you mentioned before the traders on the floor are not nyse employees i remember being on the floor not long ago, distance isn't always part of the normal protocol what -- are you going to test more as more people enter the building is there going to be a different kind of enforcement mechanism for how close people should stand together when they're not your employees how do you do it >> we changed the work flow. some aspects of the way brokers and dmns interact that we have not brought back online yet. there isn't a lot of face to face communication we installed plexiglass. people are wearing masks we literally have footprints all over the trading floor to give them a sense of where they can stand and be socially distanced. same through the cafeteria and the rest of any other areas in the building that people would

walk into. and the screening process is still up and running and we have been working with cbs on testing. so all of those things together are part of how we continue to protect each other frankly, the people on the floor want to be here. so they know that they need to maintain that social distancing so that they don't have to go home i mean, we think about the two months that we shut down for not just the new york stock exchange but in so many cities, that will be for nothing where we get a place where we have to close things down again. people are cooperating because they want to scale up, not move backwards. >> yeah. and i know we certainly look forward to the day where we can come back and broadcast from the floor of the new york stock exchange as well stacey, i want to get your thoughts on the ipo market and the fact that we have seen some very successful debuts in the last couple of weeks after really a couple of months where i think many people thought we wouldn't see this pipeline spring to life as quickly as we have there's also been a lot made of this rivalry between the stock exchange and the nasdaq.

what are you seeing and what do you expect through the rest of the year >> yeah. i think it's been -- we raised $64 billion since the beginning of the year. we have had a good amount of capital raising on going throughout the pandemic and during, during the floor closure, $35 billion capital raised just in the weeks that the floor was closed what we're seeing is that capital raising shift. so much of it was tied to companies raising money to sure up their balance sheets in light of the pandemic. so doing follow-on offerings we saw a large number of spaks which has been very active area in the ipo market, companies that are special purpose acquisition corporations looking to raise money because opportunistically they believe they're companies worth buying that's a new innovative way to come to market and we saw enterprise, tech and health care those were continuing to ipo with the shutdown and with the success of those companies we're seeing more consumer companies

and others come to market. so we're excited about what's in the pipeline we had ipo first virtual ipo where the ceo is remotely fed into the bell podium we have a lot in the pipeline. it looks like it's shaping up to be a very strong second half of the year >> all right stacey cunningham, great to see you. thanks for joining us today. >> great to see you guys. and now we head to break and let's take a look at s&p laggards at this hour with cruise lines under pressure again, royal caribbean, norwegian, oracle also down almost 5% after revenues were a bit light. we'll be right back. - did you know that americans that bought gold in 2005 quadrupled their money by 2012? and even now, many experts predict the next gold rush is just beginning. so call us money reserve, the only precious metals organization led by a former director of the united states mint.

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welcome back to "squawk alley. european markets are set to close in just a few moments. seem ma moe da has the breakdown overseas. >> closing towards the low of session despite a ramp-up in geopolitical tensions and a lackluster auto sales number nearly 57% drop in new car registrations in the month of may. however, better than 78% decline in april auto and auto part stocks worst performers in europe today led by declines in renault the eu announcing an in-depth anti-trust probe of the proposed merger let's pivot to luxury retail and look at the parent of gucci anoensing the addition of three

new board members, emma watson and the president of china's ride hailing app in an effort to diversify its board. tomorrow, bank of england held monetary policy meeting where the central bank is expected to expand its kwan tative easing program by 100 billion pounds. td securities said it's priced into the uk market speaking of the uk, boris johnson, british prime minister, agreeing to pick up brexit talks again this summer with european officials in hopes of reaching the year-end deadline. jon, back to you. >> thank you sue herrera has a news update. good morning, everyone here is what's happening at this hour more than 60% of flights in and out of beijing have been cancelled. beijing raising its virus alert level amid a resurgence in coronavirus cases. beijing's capital airport is traditionally the world's second busiest in terms of passenger

capacity the aunt jemima brand will get a new image and name it recognizes the origins of the character are, quote, based on a racial stereotype, end quote target raising its minimum wage from $13 to $15 an hour starting july 5th. and ahead of schedule. the retailer had had pledged to raise its minimum wage to $15 by the end of 2020. target will also give all of its hourly employees a one-time bonus of $200. and sin mark plans to reopen all of its more than 500 u.s. cinemas by july 17th the company announcing its phased reopening plan which will begin in texas on june 19th. you can find out more by going to cnbc.com and get information on cinemark's reopening plans. that's the news update morgan, back to you. >> sue herrera, thank you. as we head to break, let's get a check on the markets with the nasdaq still holding on to gains right now, up for the

eighth time in the last nine sessions the dow and the s&p have been slipping between gains and losses currently down right now the dow is down 100 points is s&p is down about .1% it's tech and consumer stocks that are leading those gains in the nasdaq and the only sectors in the green. we'll be back after this break stay with us ♪ ♪ yeah ♪ ♪ y-yeah ♪ ♪ yeah ♪ hey, hey

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welcome back the nasdaq not posting back-to-back losses since mid may. we'll see how it does today. joining us now is anthony chukumba as well as joseph scully, managing director and senior internet analyst. guys, good morning >> good morning, jon. >> anthony, there's been this focus on amazon during this time i know you've got some thoughts about not just amazon but how

this mixture of regular, physical retail and online might be accelerated from here what do you see happening? >> yeah. so i think that what we have seen and what we're going to continue to see is that this pandemic is going to accelerate the secular shift to online shopping in a lot of cases you had consumers who either didn't shop online before but were forced to do so, and then also consumers who were already shopping online who expanded the product categories that they were buying online i think that even once we get sort of the all-clear, let's say we get effective treatment and/or a vaccine, a lot of those behaviors are going to stick because in a lot of cases consumers found it was much easier than they thought it was going to be to shop online and, you know, amazon has 40% at least market share for online shopping in the u.s. they've got over 110 million

prime members. they're still best in class in terms of their website and they've got obviously the free two-day -- now one-day shipping they will be the prime beneficiary clearly of that acceleration in that secular shift. >> yeah. i couldn't convince my wife that we should buy groceries online until the past couple months now i think this might stick joseph, your thoughts on how amazon is positioned considering that they're near all-time highs right now and there's a little bit more buzz around anti-trust and regulatory concerns which i for one thought would perhaps be pushed off for quite a while post pandemic. >> well, yeah. so thank you, jon, for the invite so, these two questions or they're part of the both sides of the same coin, i would say. so amazon's success, rapid success over the last 10, 15 years has certainly made it up

sized. it has become kind of potential issue for the government that said, i would like to say two things one, i agree with anthony. i think the -- what we're seeing over the last three, four months in terms of acceleration of online penetration is going to stick around for an extended period of time i think structurally there are precedents to this in uk, for instance, ecommerce penetration is already double that of the u.s. in the u.s., there are certain categories like groceries you spoke to which has been -- which has seen very, very low penetration. i think that's changing. and, you know, you look at other sub categories within ecommerce where, say, wayfair plays for bulky furniture type of things and the last time we spoke earlier this week at a conference they talked about 90%, 9-0% year on year growth in their business that's another category which

amazon has historically not been very strong in and you will probably see some aggressive moves in those two categories. >> yousseff, i want your thoughts on the food delivery market we're seeing consolidation there with grubhub getting snapped up. i think it was pretty clear that they were going to be regulatory challenges if uber had really gone through with trying to get grubhub. maybe the battle lines are drawn now. what should investors expect here with profit margins, with spending outlays, incentives to workers, all those things that tend to happen, i think, once the sides have kind of amassed their troops >> so, in terms of profit margins don't hold your breath i think these companies, whether it's amazon or facebook or google or, you know, alibaba is in that same camp, they're doubling down. they're doubling down when all their peers are not doing well

offline or online, these guys are going all in they have so much money that they need to put that money to work in very high roi opportunities and crisis like these affords them the opportunities. in terms of just mna, i don't think the big tech is going to be allowed to acquire anything up size, right uber doesn't even have market share number one market share. they're number three because they were going to acquire number two, the government effectively was going to give them a lot of trouble. we're probably not going to agree to that acquisition. that said, i still think grubhub will -- i'm sorry, uber will still look to acquire both organic and through acquisitions postmates, only have 8% market share. i think it would make a lot of sense for uber to acquire that and international also affords them a fair amount of mna opportunities as well.

>> anthony, close things out for us we've covered a lot. i want to cover at least one more thing that is streaming. you guys at loop recently did a survey of 500 u.s. consumers to try to get a sense of how covid-19 is affecting their habits what do you think happens to netflix? what do you think happens to disney plus? and maybe even apple tv plus coming through and hopefully out of this. who do you expect to be at the best advantage >> yeah. that's a good question i don't want to speak too much out of school because those companies are covered by allen gould and rob sanerson the two of them feel with consumers clearly more hesitant to go to movie theaters, to go to theme parks that plays right into netflix's hands one advantage that netflix has over those other streaming services is they have such a massive library that the sort of hulks in terms of production of

new content is not nearly as much of an issue for them as it is for disney plus, as it is for apple tv that, you know, that doesn't have as much content but having said that, look, clearly, you know, the rising tide lists all those and all three of those players that you mentioned, one great thing they enjoy, advantage they enjoy over a lot of other players is very, very deep pockets. we think there will be a pickup in streaming activity. >> get your point about libraries. my kids are getting into the simpsons for the first time and just in the late '80s right now. they can't believe how many episodes there are that helps at a time like this still to come, netflix ceo reed hastings what he told njtiawk box" on social iusce and covid concerns that's next. stay with us a digital foundation from vmware

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welcome back netflix ceo reed hastings making a big announcement this morning. our andrew ross sorkin caught up with him and joins us with the highlights hey, andrew. >> hey there nice to see you. netflix ceo reed hastings and his wife are donating $120 million to three institutions dedicated to higher education of students of color. uncf and the atlanta-based liberal arts school spellman college andmore house college are each receiving $40 million each, the largest individual gift ever in support of student scholarships that historically black colleges and universities. and i spoke with hastings by zoom yesterday >> we're stepping up with this $120 million gift. you know, we want to help draw attention to the hbcus, them being part of the solution, for america and for black children to aspire to and so we're so

proud. this moment is not the first time that racism reared its terribly, ugly head. many of us have been working on these issues for a long time again, for me mostly through education and my visits and my understanding and my relationships with all of my colleagues here was all prethis crisis and you bring covid in and the stress, the typical black family knows many more covid victims than the typically white family because covid hit so har in the black community and of course you have the police violence and the killings the amount of tragedy really did get us to focus and say, let's do something now that will be supportive of these great institutions and give people some sense of hope >> and you know, morgan and jon what reed hastings wants to do is bring attention to these colleges and universities in hopes that rather than so much of the money that typically goes

to people's alma maters it actually ends up going to some of these colleges which have been underfunded for years we talk about the harvards and princetons and yales of the world, they have 30 in some cases $40 billion endowments, the undocuments of the historically black colleges in america are in the low 100 millions and sometimes lower than that. and so, that's really where the opportunity lies so it's about the money. but i think one of the things he's trying to do is get some of frankly our wealthy viewers to think differently about their contributions, mayor bloomberg making the largest donation in history to johns hopkins, his alma mater for $1.8 billion and total $3.35 billion to johns hopkins alone and i think the idea is that if some of that kind of money could make it to these universities, it could create some real change and better the world >> yeah, great stuff, andrew we just had darren walker from the ford foundation on yesterday, day before yesterday, talking about exactly that

but also, these students getting scholarships when they come out of college, they're going to need jobs. i wonder if reed hastings talked at all about netflix's own hiring practices with historically black colleges and universities i have noticed their demographic numbers which i believe they released of hispanic and black workers have ticked higher recently at about 8% and 7%. >> right, yep. >> is there a plan as part of that >> he says they're working on it he says it's something that he is hoping to do better and better at. talked about how, you know, if you look at the u.s. population right now, 13% african-american, i think he wants the company to represent the demographics of the country as you said in our relative basis to silicon valley, it's a lobar they're doing better in so far at 7% for the employees across the company, 8% at the management level in terms of the african-american employees at

the company, but he does want to do better and also talked about the issue you talked about which is it's not just about getting and giving money to these universities, institutions, it's about then leveraging some of that to try to hire from those places >> all right we'll see where this goes, andrew thank you. still to come, online learning in the age of the coronavirus. the ceo of coursera joins us next isimbing up in our list th year of disrupters we're back in two minutes. ♪

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as we head to break, take a look at the worst stocks on the dow this morning it is cyclical names energy stocks like exxon and chevron, boeing down 1.5%, also merck and dow. speaking of the dow, we are hugging the flat line down just 8 points right now it's been another volatile session. the s&p up ever so slightly right now, 2 points. the nasdaq is the outperformer of half a percent thanks to those tech and communications and consumer discretionary stocks we'll be rig bk. sy ths.htac - [announcer] if you've tried college but never finished,

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halted, news pending we will continue to monitor that and let you know when the precise news does come in. and now online learning company korcera coming up at number four on our disruptive 50 list julia boorstin is alongside the ceo. >> thank you, jon. thank you for joining us today. >> hi, julia. >> so tell us what has been the impact of covid on demand for classes? >> it's been considerable. unesco tracks the number of school closures due to covid as of april 20th, 1.6 billion students from kindergarten to college had their school shut. even as schools shut down, people went online to start learning we've seen individuals come to

coursera they're learning data science, computer science, taking personal wellness classes and so we've really seen a tremendous spike from individual learners and also universities who are trying to move their teaching online but often don't have the resources to do that >> now, about two months ago you launched the workforce recovery initiative to offer free courses to unemployed workers. what kind of progress have you made there how many people have been taking those classes through that program? >> yeah, basically when we saw covid coming, and it was one of our partners at duke who had a joint venture with wuhan university, they had the campus closed in january, so we knew that this pandemic was going to be making a global presence. first, of course, it was the hospitalizations and flattening the curve. the next thing we saw was school closures, so we started offering coursera for free to

universities so that students could continue to learn online for free we've had a million students enroll, over 5 million enrollments and over 13 million hours of learning. that's on the student side but the next wave after the school closures really is unemployment we saw that coming, so we said let's do coursera for government for free through the end of the year so that any national, state or local government can offer our partner's courses at no cost to people impacted by covid through the end of the year. so far we have seen a lot of interest we're now activated at more than 150 countries and 225 u.s. states are using this and it's 3800 courses and computer science, data science, job skilling, career search courses that are available to help people get reskilled during this downtime >> now, a big part of coursera's business is something called

coursera for business. you're partnered with over 2,000 different companies to help them upskill their workers. what's going on there? are you seeing those companies cut back because they're facing cost pressure or are they shifting their investments in different ways where is that business >> it's really a mix i think that it kind of depends on the industry and to some degree the region. for the most part industries in travel, hospitality, entertainment, the ones that have had their business models deeply challenged by stay-at-home and closures of business, they're not spending a lot of money on learning and are trying to obviously cut back on almost everything. but for most industries, professional services, financial services, manufacturing, we are seeing a redoubling of efforts to accelerate what some people call digital transformation. this is the idea that across businesses the ability to use data to make better decisions, the ability to move software into the cloud so they can have

more efficient cloud computing, the ability to create digital experiences for their customers and to do sales and digital marketing to finding their customers as well as finding digital data and computing to make better and more efficient supply chain operation decisions. really digital transformation is happening around the world in every industry, and i think, frankly, higher education is about to really undergo their experience with digital transformation in the coming months and years ahead >> yeah. digital transformation is something we've been talking about quite a bit on the show in the midst of this pandemic, jeffrey. thanks for being on with us. i'm curious, because we've been talking about the opportunity for disruption and the adoption of online learning for many years pre-pandemic and never really fully took root but i'm wondering now, how do you keep students and participants engaged and willing to stick it out to the end of a course are there lessons that have been learned in the years ahead of this pandemic that you're now

applying to be able to help them avoid things like digital burnout? >> yeah. well, you know, one of the analogies i like to use is that building online learning from the ground up to be online is a lot different than putting a zoom camera in front of a lecturer doing that is similar to going to a drama, like a play, and just video recording a play and calling it a movie movies have special techniques, they have sound tracks, they have cut scenes. there's a way to design a movie where a movie is not just a recorded play. similarly, there's a way to design online learning so it's not just a camera on a lecturer. one of the ways to avoid buildout is to have engagement, have the ability for individuals to go at their open pace, to build projects, to do hands-on experiences and group experiences. so i think there's a way to design it to avoid burnout with respect to completion, it really has a lot to do with why

the learner is there in the first place. if you think about the amount of learning on youtube, it's massive. not every individual finishes ever youtube video and not every individual finishes the coursera course but if you get a college degree, a certificate or a job, completion rates are much higher the state of new york partnered with johns hopkins university to train covid contact tracers. this is a free course, five hours long it's only been available for four weeks we've already had 400,000 enrollments. and the completion rates are above 30%, sometimes 50% because people are looking for jobs. >> jeff, i wonder, has this crisis and the attention to online learning from people who maybe weren't paying attention before at all caused you to shift your mission or the way you allocate resources are there opportunities that you see now that you didn't see before >> yeah, for sure.

the fundamental mission hasn't changed. i mean our founders are two professors they didn't do this to create a business, they did it to create access to better education and better opportunity for folks and i do think, i don't know if we'll get to this in more detail but the promise of remote learning and online learning together creates incredible opportunities to develop skills and get jobs the big shift that we've seen is that schools have suddenly, importantly, urgently figured out we need to offer online learning not just on-campus learning because the pandemic has had a huge impact on the operations of campuses so we've really shifted a lot of resources toward our campus offering in february before covid we had 30 customers using coursera for campus we now have over 9,000 instances of coursera for campus it's almost 20% of every institution in the world is using coursera in just the last

90 days. >> jeff, you've talked about the mission of democratizing access to education with the pandemic having a disproportionate impact on black and latinx employment, what are you doing there to help close that racial employment gap >> we already have over 200 universities who have courses on many topics. not only data science and sort of mental health but also things like criminal law, social justice, history, things like that so we've created collections of courses to help educate the broader public in giving those courses away for free. we're also going to put resources, funding towards building out a larger catalog of those courses so education and awareness can be available to everybody. getting better representation among underrepresented groups who are authors and instructors is a great way to inspire younger learners to not only say i have access to those courses but i'm learning from people who look like me

on the employment side -- >> jeff, jeff, you know what -- jeff, i know we could keep talking about this forever, unfortunately we are out of time thank you for joining us today we really appreciate it. ceo of coursera. guys, back over to you. >> thank you, julia, as well we are keeping our eye on shares of hertz, which have been halted news pending now let's get to the calculator. mike santoli, see if you can get that nickname to stick in "the half." welcome to "the halftime report." i am mike santoli in for scott wapner yesterday chair powell said there is a lot of uncertainty about the timing and strength of the recovery and reiterated the fed will do whatever it takes to help the economy the dow and s&p have been fighting it out around the flat line today the nasdaq is the clear outperformer, up 0.6 of 1% smal