Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
This Week in Edtech with Ben Kornell, 4/29/22
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Guest: Stratsi Kulinski, President of NewU University
- International Bubble?
- Metaverse
- Adult Learning
- Mental Health Data
- Funding + M&A
Welcome to Ed Tech insiders. In this podcast we talk to educators and educational technology investors, thought leaders, founders and operators about the most interesting and exciting trends in the field. I'm your host, Alex Sarlin, an educational technology veteran with over a decade of work at leading edtech companies.
Ben Kornell:Welcome to This Week in tech, it's the week of April 29. Spring is here on it's the long sprint to summer vacation. There continues to be lots of news in the ed tech world. This week we'll talk about some of the highs and low in the Asian and tech scenes. And we're also going to focus on the incoming wave of AR VR, and Metaverse at tech companies and projects.
Alexander Sarlin:We're also going to cover Udemy is new skills report for working learners. A little bit about mental health in schools. And we have a great guest president of new U, which offers three year college degrees. So let's jump right in Ben, tell us about Asia.
Ben Kornell:Well, to kick off today. Our first headline is is the International bubble bursting in Asia. First some news from China and then some also tempering news from India in China, New oriental, one of the largest ad tech companies in the history of the world reported $125 million net loss versus 125 million net profit or net income a year earlier, their quarterly revenue has declined 48% year on year, and their stock is down 94% essentially going from $100 to $1. In the last year, they've let go of 60,000 staff members, and they've decreased their learning centers from 1700 to basically 650 to 700. So a huge huge change for new oriental, for those of you who haven't been following in the podcast, you know, a lot of this is not new Orientals fault. It really comes from a government crackdown on private tutoring companies, of which new oriental was the largest. The kind of Fallout here is so public, because these are publicly traded companies, new oriental is on the New York Stock Exchange. But you could imagine dozens of other tutoring companies experiencing a similar drop in value, you know, a 95% drop. And it does go to show how much the ad tech space can be impacted by regulation. So before we turn to our hottest market, India, you know, Alex, any reaction to the China Fallout and new Orientals numbers?
Alexander Sarlin:I mean, we've been talking on the show for a couple of months about the fallout of this Chinese policy decision and putting these extreme numbers on it, I think just makes it feel even realer. I mean, 60,000 people, you know, those are these enormous numbers that you sort of only see in India and China, the idea of letting go 60,000 people in one year, but I think that China has really, you know, for lack of a better metaphor, you know, shot itself in the foot from an edtech perspective. And it's going to be a while before they come back, or I'm curious if President Xi and the leaders in China are going to sort of feel the impact of this and reverse this anytime soon. I think, you know, when we sort of think about the authoritarian bent here, the idea of, you know, what are the pros and cons of working in a country with this kind of government, you know, I think the pros in the past can be that you can have these, you know, enormous support from the government, you know, and spread really quickly and, and sort of be able to really get humongously big very quickly. But this is the reverse side of it, that if the government turns on you and changes a policy, an enormous company can go completely in the black guy in the red, from in the black to in the red. What do you think then?
Ben Kornell:Yeah, I mean, I was there in 2018, in Beijing meeting with the leaders of new oriental, and they had no inclination, or if they did, they certainly didn't reveal it, as they presented at the conference, about their plans to grow and expand and they were looking at, you know, plans for 500,000 staff, they were looking at plans to be a multi billion dollar business, expanding beyond China, across the world. And now, what you can see from this latest report is that they've had to almost reinvent themselves reinvent their model. Now, the Chinese market has definitely had a crackdown with private education companies targeting kids. There is a window opening for workforce learning, and there's a number of companies that are doing things in the vein of LinkedIn, for learning or a coaching model that are starting to grow. And I think investors are very wary of jumping into that space. But it does clear some of the hurdles that the government has put forward on younger learners. So China really is a warning sign for all investors going abroad and looking at an authoritarian government or, you know, just an emerging economy. Turning to India, you know, this has been our hottest market in the last 24 months, by Jews leading the way, of course, but also a number of edtech unicorns emerging. And we started to get some signs that that could be cooling off, it's not so much of a retread as a new oriental, but guna Academy laid off 10% of their workers, that was about 600 employees. And by Jews, there's an article about the EdTech bubble bursting, and they're facing some real pushback in terms of the quality of their methodology, but also the kind of return to school and how much people will leverage their online tutoring core business. So it is a really critical time for these Indian ad tech companies, not only to show that they can continue their fast revenue growth, but they can also drive towards profitability, as India starts settling into their new normal post COVID.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, you know, you tend to be more bullish across the board on Indian Ed Tech than I do. But in this particular case, I am not so sure that there's really a bubble bursting quite yet. It doesn't feel like there's enough evidence for it, just from the stories we're seeing. There's a lot of big funding rounds happening fund in India just is raising $500 million, not for Ed Tech specifically, but it's a VC firm that had invested in by Jews, and they're continuing to sort of go strong, we see companies like class plus and Newton School and, and others continue to grow. So I have a wait and see attitude here. I definitely am not sure what is coming and nobody is but it doesn't feel like buy juice and eat Academy are necessarily going to be the harbingers of the sort of downturn in India. I think we'll have to wait and see a little bit but I'm actually still feel like things are going to continue to grow for a little while. That's my, my guess my best prediction. But we'll see where it all goes.
Ben Kornell:Yeah, I mean, I guess the last thing to say is, how much do you anchor the Indian edtech market with what buy juice is doing? You know, one of the points in the article that we'll have here and in the show notes, is that white hat, which was one of the acquisitions of by Jews was particularly struggling. And white hat is basically an online coding company. And they've also moved into teaching music online. So the core business has slowed because schools back in session, but it's these ancillary companies that buy juice that's rolled up that are also facing some friction. So maybe they've just gone on too much of a buying spree, or maybe the time will tell that this diversified approach and rolling it up has been a masterstroke. So you know, I kind of agree with you, we might be over anchoring on a few of the big boys to, you know, make a rush to judgment on the Indian market. What's our second headline?
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, so Metaverse and AR augmented reality and VR, virtual reality have made a lot of headlines in the last few months, but they're starting to be some really interesting education projects that are worthy of note starting to come out in that space. And we thought it may be a good time to revisit and find out what they're thinking about. So there was a really interesting article, an interview this week in Fast Company with the CEO of Epic Games, that's the creator of fortnight and the Unreal Engine and many of the, you know, biggest games in the world right now. And what was interesting about it is that a gaming company like that is getting very excited about the metaverse. They're starting to open up their worlds to creators and have people design their own levels and starting to upskill you know, to change their internal engine so that they can begin to work in virtual reality. And I think they're really starting to bet on it. You're also seeing Facebook meta open its first retail store all about the metaverse related products. Obviously, Facebook rebranded as meta, specifically as a move to sort of own the metaverse and they're starting to lean into that now. One really interesting project is called the Athena verse, which is the first education city in the metaverse created by Sophia technology. It's a female owned British ed tech firm and what you're starting to see is that there are VR and AR companies that allow other people to build worlds within them. So this is a company called somnium. Space worlds. It's a web three based, you know, Metaverse VR company. And it allows a third party ad tech company to go build a world all about education inside there. So you're just starting to see things start to gel in a way that I don't think we have, in the past a couple of more VR headlines, a company called immerse, which is a really interesting one raised $9 million, not this week, but it within the last month or two for an immersive language learning platform, which will include sort of social events where you can practice speaking with people in all different languages, I think they're starting with Spanish, we've talked on the show with the CEO of investment diversity, who's doing online MBAs even saw Fidelity Investments create at education project this week in another online world creation program called decentraland, about teaching financial education. So you know, I think the momentum is really starting to happen there. The investment that's been going in for the last few months or years even is starting to actually manifest projects. And I think it's a space that is, I think, beginning to be really actually worth watching rather than just a buzzword. I don't know, what do you think, Ben, do you think it's actually coming? Or is it yet another false alarm?
Ben Kornell:Well, you know, when Fidelity Investments is jumping in, it's a bandwagon moment for sure. Exactly. You know, what's interesting to me is how many analogs or you know, parallels there are to the real world? And so the question is, you know, do you build your meta school in somebody else's world? Or do you build your own ecosystem and hope that people will come to it as the one stop shop for education? And so what you end up having are focused content developers opening up shop in other people's meta verses. So that's one strategy. And the other strategy is people creating a dedicated Metaverse for education with the idea that there is almost like an apartment building where they can have many people open up shops, in addition to themselves providing, you know, a broad variety of learning options. And you know, it's hard to see how that will shake out. My guess is that there's going to emerge a dominant Metaverse platform. And just like with social media, you know, we're in the early days where there were a bunch of experiments and different people getting traction, but eventually there'll be some consolidation of users. And then that will be the place where the real estate, the virtual real estate is most valuable. I do think that it's important to have this highlighted on the show, because so much is made of web three, around crypto Dows. Blockchain. But the real advance here is taking the idea of gaming worlds combining with VR AR, and then essentially opening up those virtual worlds to a wide variety of providers on those platforms. That actually I think is the most exciting, you know, over the next 10 years, innovation that will directly affect my kids, your kids, like, you know, kids that are in kindergarten today can expect to take, you know some classes through the metaverse and I also think that for edtech, folks, it is a critical strategy of like which Metaverse do you pick? Do you try to create your own? Are you the shovels and you know, pans for the gold rush? And you're really providing just the tool? These are really critical questions right now and it is the wild wild Midwest.
Alexander Sarlin:It is the wild meadow West Westworld. I think that you know just as a prediction based on the structure you're putting out there. There is a competition among very big tech companies like metta and Epic Games and others and Unreal and Unity to really think about who should own the metaverse as you say, who's gonna run the dominant design? And actually, you know, when I started really looking into this Metaverse concept, the idea of a Metaverse actually is defined by there being one Metaverse like having multiple virtual, you know, worlds is already true, right? That's already true in gaming. The Metaverse what makes the metaverse different is the idea of exactly what you just said, one single environment where you can do many different types of things where you can shop and learn and do entertainment and gaming all in one place. So I would say that, you know, especially for ad tech companies, which tend to be much, much, much smaller than, you know, enormous gaming companies and social media companies like Mehta, I think it's much more likely that we're not going to see a fully educational online World as much as one of these companies taking over, or maybe one or two taking over and creating these enormous Metaverse is, and then education providers being able to jump in and create really exciting experiences within it, you're already seeing that and things like fortnight, and in Roblox, you're already seeing some of that thinking. But the idea of it being in a fully fleshed really, really well structured platform is I think we're, as you say, where our kids may be actually learning. And that's the pivot that Facebook is relying on, they're saying, we're going to be called meta because we're going to be that company. They're really, really, really trying to get there before other competitors. And we'll see if they do Microsoft is also, I'm sure trying to get there before other competitors. Then let's talk a little bit about adult learning out of the metaverse and into the workplace, what is happening in the workplace learning beat this week,
Ben Kornell:as we've seen in just the workforce learning space has had gone through a revolution over the last two, three years, and at the forefront of that has been Udemy. And Udemy released an incredible trove of data around global workplace learning. And ultimately, you know, the Udemy value proposition is learn practical skills here that can help you with your job. The headline news is that people are using Udemy to develop soft skills and probably not job related interests. So hobbies or interest areas, soft skills, like communication and leadership are popping up the list. And an example of that would be in Japan, there's an 830% increase in people taking coaching courses on how to be a good coach. Also, 43% of Gen Z respondents have learned new skills to advance their career, and the last three months and 92% plan to learn a new skill in the next three months. So this idea of modularity of basically ongoing rather than fixed Learning Paths has really risen. And then I mentioned this before 27% of respondents to the Udemy survey, plan to learn a new personal or hobby related skill in the next three months, compared to only 18% For technical skills 13% for power skills, like leadership and communication, and 7% for tactical skills, marketing and accounting sales. So the learning platforms often start with this value of learn something here and it will help you you know, move forward in your job, the ROI in our program is that you get a promotion or you get a new job, but the learning behavior has shifted. And people either are finding that the soft skill courses are actually what gives them the leg up on the job, or that the soft skill courses are the most interesting, engaging and keep them coming back. So given that you're well versed in the adult education world, what was your takeaway from the Udemy? Data?
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, no, I completely agree that a really big headline here is sort of the rise of soft skills of people actively searching for, you know, power skills, what they call them or personal skills. I think the only thing I would add is that I think there continues to be this sort of great divide in adult education between these two types of learning the idea of learning, cutting edge technical skills that this report names, things like cloud architecture, decentralized, you know, DAP development for blockchain, there are technical skills that are that are on the rise, that are very cutting edge. And then there are all these coaching and efficiency and productivity and personal success. I think what I'm always sort of interested in is how these things seems so far apart that this sort of it's been hard for people to find ways to have to combine them or sort of find a find a middle ground, it feels like you either have to learn, you know how to give feedback and become a manager, or you have to learn super hardcore, very cutting edge tech skills. And they seem like it's so polarizing. And I just wonder if there's a future where it will feel less like the sort of soft versus hard, durable versus non durable technical skills that we always see on that on that same spectrum? Well,
Ben Kornell:I think, Alex, for the, for these marketplace platforms, they seem to be trending in the direction of the softer skills, the more variety a little bit less powerful technically. And then we see a number of new companies going really deep in one or two particular subject areas. And that allows them to provide technical depth Yeah, but also, they can design their courses and the platform itself to really connect with that content. Do you see that divide in durable versus technical All skills, also having to do with the platform development or products themselves.
Alexander Sarlin:Fantastic point. I mean, the example that jumps to mind when you say that is the company, a cloud guru, which is a workplace learning platform designed entirely for cloud architecture, it was actually acquired by Pluralsight, one of the big workplace catalog offerings. And that is a platform designed for nothing but cloud architecture, it sort of eats, sleeps, and breathes cloud architecture. And it does exactly what you're saying, the thing that's sort of missing from me is that it's true on the other side, as well, that there are platforms that aren't designed for power skills. They're designed for interviewing techniques, they're designed for reflection. They're designed for feedback. They're designed for interacting with people and getting feedback on, you know, your tone of voice and things like that there's even AI being put into them. So I think there is going to be specialization. And I also agree that the platforms that don't specialize, and I would count Udemy, and Coursera, and edX still in those they have added certain features, but they are not specialized. I think we'll continue to have this strange divide where you have people there for wildly different reasons. And the platform sort of doesn't quite optimize for either of them, if that makes sense. And that's why you see splits like this. But yeah, it'll get more specialized over time. But when you're a big platform like Udemy, you don't want like when you see this 27% of respondents want to learn a new personal or hobby related skill, you know, that's a plurality, but it is not a majority. And you wouldn't want to build out a huge, you know, portfolio product system where people could give each other feedback on their hobbies, just based on 27%, when 18% are there for technical, so it sort of puts these platforms in a little bit of a bind, because they can specialize. And as you say, some disruptors can come along and specialize and sort of eat their lunch a little bit in a very specific.
Ben Kornell:And I have to imagine from a consumer standpoint, the tension here is do I value a one stop shop, where I can take all these courses together? Or maybe like build some sort of transcript of the things that I've done? Or would I rather bought between different specialized content, and kind of like a choose your own adventure. And I have to believe with the technical skill, folks, because your kind of lead is all really about, you know, how specialized the technical learning is, they're going to gravitate more towards the specialists, the single subject area experts, and so that to me, would then put pressure and make the marketplaces more like a liberal arts degree more like, you know, coding 101 is where you do you know, Coursera, or edX, or Udemy. But if you really want to get a job in that area and develop some expertise, you need to go to that specialized online site or bootcamp?
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, it's a really interesting insight. And there are ways that the so Udemy is sort of the ultimate one stop shop and his 185,000 courses, by far into my understanding the biggest on the internet, because it's been an open marketplace for you know, 10 plus years. So it is an incredible one stop shop, what Udemy could do and what you know, Coursera and edX have begun to do is partner with external sites. You know, when Coursera bought rhythm labs from Bulgaria, they incorporated a sort of technical tool into the platform. These are big companies now they have one and a half billion $3 billion valuations. They I think it'd be very smart for them to start acquiring these small specialized companies rather than sort of ceding territory to them and having to pivot to the power skills only. But yeah, we'll see where it all pans out. It's gonna be interesting. All right.
Ben Kornell:Now let's take us to headline number four. Yep. And
Alexander Sarlin:I know we're running a little short on time here. So let's keep this one really quick. It is a headline that we have talked about a lot on this show, which is the ongoing humongous mental health struggles that are happening in schools. There was a CDC report this week that 37% of us high schoolers are facing mental health struggles in these COVID era basically almost all the time. So that's like four out of 10 high schoolers are constantly dealing with you know, anxiety, depression, all sorts of really intense mental health and you know, you're starting to see the tech world adapt to this securely. acquired a company called rhythm this week rhythm does these social emotional learning check ins and basically offers the ability to give mental health data to a classroom. You saw Kansas City, set up a program where at tech startups can go into schools and test and sort of get feedback and startup called zone to grow which is new to me, but it seems like a really interesting product is starting to track again how students are feeling and doing in this remote learning age and there's some interesting things happening smart the maker of the SMART Board We're just partnered with a company called couth to bring vital, you know, mental health resources to more students. So you're starting to see ad tech move into this, you're also starting to see a whole new wave of startups that care about social emotional learning. But I think the real headline here, just to put a fine point on it is this mental health crisis, the numbers just keep getting worse. And it really feels like we've got to, as a field really take this very seriously. And it may be it's a real focus for where the data and the investment should go. What do you think, Ben?
Ben Kornell:Alex, you often make the point that there's going to be this COVID generation that kind of moves through the system, and this might be the first, you know, the information we've been getting over the last three months is the first real data point around the scale and scope of the challenge 40% dealing with anxiety and mental health issues? And so the bigger question is, is this a group that we're going to have to develop special supports and interventions for and then we kind of, quote unquote, go back to normal? Where is this a new normal? Or was this the normal before and we just weren't aware of it. But I did also see some data around elementary school students dealing with anxiety, no matter what it's going to be with us here for years. And the kind of approaches in this field all show that early intervention, early support, early therapy is critical to addressing the needs over the long haul. And there's a bunch of other companies that are cropping up to do direct mental health in schools, you know, to basically deliver a point of sight into schools, Hazel health being one that that comes to mind for me. Yeah.
Alexander Sarlin:Let's do our funding and m&a rundown for the week. A lot of things happening this week, we saw Zenda, United Arab Emirates based startup about school billing, get a $9.4 million round to streamline school fee payment. We saw a $25 million Series B round in Newton School, which is a big bootcamp in India basically to get people jobs at startups that offers income share agreements and sort of guaranteed jobs. We saw bridge bank providing a $7.5 million credit facility to support blue sky elearning growth that's a San Diego based LMS system. This was an interesting one vivify, which is a Northwest based company that basically works with schools to help them rent out their facilities outside of school hours for extra revenue, like rent out their school pools, or fields or cafeterias. They just got a million pound investment that's in the UK. It's northwest of the UK. Then Nigerian Ed Tech Ninja co kids got an early seed round funding of 350,000. We also saw VR startup Moon hub raising 2.6 million for virtual reality training programs just like we were talking about VR earlier that's in things like practicing being a delivery driver or security or dementia care training real life scenarios in VR. We saw it next phase capital announced an investment in dinosaur of edtech as tech software, which is an adult education and workforce training company that's been around for more than 40 years. That's incredible. That's in every state for standardized test prep reskilling, it's one of those that just just, you know, keep on churning is behind the scenes, but it does lots of things. We saw a half a million dollar round to acha Dasia, which is backed by a x meta investors, and they're looking to basically offer professional development curriculum, mostly with business to business and government partners. We also saw a couple of acquisitions, ed tech platform, veranda learning acquired a test prep Institute, I believe that is all in India, then the Western Governors University labs, accelerator backed concourses, reimagining of university admissions. So this is a different way that it works where universities actually apply for students rather than students applying for universities very intriguing model that fits WG us, you know, interest in disrupting the existing system. And finally, we saw Singapore based genius group, which is a entrepreneur education powerhouse a pretty big company, complete two of four planned acquisitions. One is of New Zealand based education angels, which is a provider of in home childcare. Any listeners who are listening Last week saw that there are a few different big investments in childcare marketplaces. And they also purchased a property investors network out of the UK which is a group that basically connects property investors, people who are you know, buying investment property. And this is doesn't sound like Ed Tech, you know directly. But because genius group is all about entrepreneurial education, you can sort of see the overlap of that's a very entrepreneurial pursuit. And you have all of these sort of individuals trying to buy and sell and flip and rent houses. So lots of movement all around the world. That was our funding and m&a round
Ben Kornell:game part. Alex, you've been telling me that you've put together this complex game that is going to totally trip me up. So I'm really ready to be a guinea pig here. What is our game for today?
Alexander Sarlin:We didn't have time for our game last week. So I wanted to come back with a vengeance this week. That idea of the game this week, we talked about international ed tech a lot. This one is going to be about the US. I'm going to give you a headline that's missing the state that it is happening in. And you have to name the state what US state are we talking about? All right, ready to go? Okay. All right. First one is the University of the state's capitol announced plans to close 16 of its 17 in person campuses by 2025, leaving only one remaining in its home state of blank. So you need the capital and the state. What university are we talking about? That's going to close? It's in person campuses, where this
Ben Kornell:is a really tough one, and I'm probably going to get it wrong. I'm going to guess that is the state of New York and it is Albany, because they're trying to reach many more students. And they're also not in New York City. So I'm gonna go I don't even know if this exists University of Albany, in the state of New York.
Alexander Sarlin:There is a SUNY Albany, but this is about the University of Phoenix. The University of Phoenix is closing its homes campuses, leaving only one in Phoenix, Arizona. So the University of Phoenix, the Ed Tech, original ed tech superstar is closing. Its in person campuses. All right. How about this one? I think this is the K 12 Beat. I'm sure you're on top of this, when starting next year, every four year old in the state of blank will have a chance to attend preschool at no cost to their parents. That's a new headline this week.
Ben Kornell:I can imagine that being true in a lot of states. I'm a school board member in California, and it is true in California next year. So I'm gonna go with California.
Alexander Sarlin:Ah, you're in the right region, California, but it is Colorado sign that this? Jared, I think
Ben Kornell:you get a point because that is also true in California. And it isn't new. It is new, but you
Alexander Sarlin:got some credit. Yeah, I'll give you the point. How about this one, springboard and the University of blank Global Campus partnered recently to provide technical boot camps in high skill fields, which University Global Campus is working with springboard?
Ben Kornell:I believe it's University of Maryland. We had John King running for Governor of Maryland. And I know he was mentioning some innovative partnerships. Is that correct?
Alexander Sarlin:Exactly right. Ding ding, ding. Yes. All right. So you're at one and a half to two out of three. How about this one? An innovative new financial aid program in this state is offering two years of free community college to all high school seniors coming out of the public schools and guaranteed college admission for the four year universities for students with a 3.0 or higher GPA. I'll give you a hint on this one. This is another West Coast state that is working to really really make the path to college smooth. Hmm.
Ben Kornell:I'm going to probably go with Washington. Yes. Washington state. They definitely have been thinking about pathways, but also career engagement and community college as part of a full system. Is that right?
Alexander Sarlin:That is exactly right. Fantastic. Yeah, you're warming up. How about this one? The blank state education commissioner's office this week labeled rejected content in math textbooks as an attempt to indoctrinate students. This is one of those big political blow ups. Where's this happening?
Ben Kornell:Oh, boy. Well, it's in a red state. It might be Florida, because they tend to make most of the news on this kind of stuff. But I'm gonna just, I'm gonna What do you say? Yeah, was it? Yeah.
Alexander Sarlin:That was Florida. That was the outgoing state education commissioner with full support of the governor. Yeah, Florida is quite a mess. Last one. Last one. You're killing it. The University of blank system announced tuition free education for Native American students starting in fall of this year.
Ben Kornell:Well, we recently had Ryan Stewart, the former Secretary of Education of New Mexico, so I'm gonna guess New Mexico.
Alexander Sarlin:Oh, that's a great guest. It is actually California. This one UC system announced tuition free education. Haitian for Native American students, students who are from federally recognized tribes, so that is, you know, the biggest state university system in the country. I thought that was really interesting news. But yeah, New Mexico is a fantastic guest, I think you got, you know, four out of six. They're fantastic work. That was I really appreciate
Ben Kornell:your math, your four out of six is very kind. I'm going to have to put together a gauntlet for you next week. Thanks for the game. Alex. Thank you.
Alexander Sarlin:For our deep dive, today, we're going to talk to President Kolinsky of new you a new nonprofit university that offers three year college degrees and a $7,500 per semester price tag. It's a really innovative model. Thank you so much for being here. President Klinsky.
Unknown:Glad to be here. And thanks for having me.
Alexander Sarlin:So first question, tell us about the new use system. Why are you offering three year degrees? And what does it mean to the prospective learners to be able to get a full Bachelor's in three years?
Unknown:Thank you, Alex. It's a great question. And people often ask us like, why are you doing this, it's a little bit adventurous is probably an understatement because it is a big undertaking. And it's quite ambitious. launching a new university, especially a private nonprofit, does take a fair amount of effort, legal and regulatory work, financial resources, commitment. And I'm very happy to report that after four years from kind of the inception of this idea, until today, the team and I have been able to basically do all the necessary things that we have to do. And now we're getting ready to admit our first class of students in fall 2022. To go back to your question, why we're doing this, and what's the need for this, college education has really become so expensive tuition is through the roof. And college was supposed to be this kind of great enabler of social and economic mobility for our society. But unfortunately, it's fallen short of that promise. Everybody sees that tuition at private nonprofit universities is now on average, $50,000 a year, even public institutions for out of state tuition, you're looking at something closer to$30,000 a year. And who can afford that I mean, so basically, the students and the families that need college the most are mostly cut off. In we've seen this, unfortunately, with the recent pandemic only exacerbated that trend. But almost a million students fell off the track to college over the last two years, those are students who otherwise would have gone to college and, and they mostly didn't, or fell off because of affordability issues because of financial challenges and mental health challenges as well. And so what we wanted to do is, we really kind of looked around, and there's been a lot of talk both on the hill and also within the academic system in the sector itself. And in all segments of society, people are talking about the need for reform the need for doing things more efficiently, cheaper, faster. But for the most part, these are just discussions. And there's a lot of good initiatives that are taking place, but they're fairly piecemeal, here in there. And we wanted to do something that really demonstrates a viable model that accomplishes the goal that we have to provide quality, private nonprofit education at a much more affordable cost. And so the only way to do this was to actually start the university from scratch. I was the president of a regionally accredited private nonprofit school in the past. And even though it was not a big school, still, making any changes or reforms takes a lot of time. And when you look at the way that the system is set up, it has a lot of advantages. But this is definitely kind of a handicap of the status quo. Because there's a lot of stakeholders, there's a lot of forces pulling in different directions for every new initiative. And so launching a new university, although it's very challenging, very time consuming and very expensive, is actually I think one of the viable ways in which we can demonstrate that there is a way forward that there is a way to implement meaningful reform. And we deliberately went the nonprofit route because we want our innovations in our best practices in our hopefully future successes. Obviously time will tell but we want others in the in the higher education sector to borrow from us. And if we come across something that works well, we want other universities to do that. So a little bit, maybe kind of a roundabout way of answering a question, but we can certainly try to formulate this in the short term response.
Ben Kornell:Next question, President Klinsky. It seems like an innovation in accreditation and structures is in hand across the higher education landscape, yours being one of the leading innovations, can you talk to us a little bit about how technology fits in with your vision for the three year university? And how might edtech providers content or companies be supportive of this move to smaller, more compact degree program?
Unknown:Yes, indeed. So at first glance, we're a little bit of an oxymoron, kind of in the sense that we want to be focused on in person instruction, because we believe in the power of human connection, and the learning outcomes that we see both from experience and from research tend to be a little better when people are face to face. But at the same time, we are strong believers, and we embrace technology and technology innovation in pretty much all of our other operations. So other than the classroom instruction. And of course, there's still plenty of opportunities to use technology in that setting, especially for some of the students with reading or writing disabilities, or anything like that, in even some basic use case scenarios like taking notes in the classroom, just transcribing something with an AI assistant or having kind of lessons recorded and available to students after that. But more importantly, from our perspective, we want to build a very efficient operational kind of ecosystem of technology, platforms and solutions in as a greenfield development as a brand new university, we actually wanted to think about how we can enable our future growth, and scaling plans to really give us a hassle free experience in headache free experience, I've actually had the opportunity to spend a few years working in Silicon Valley for a cloud based software technology provider in the entertainment space. And so kind of my team and I have also spent a fair amount of time thinking how to build the software and technology, architecture, hardware technology, and software and services architecture, to enable everything that we do, from marketing, to admissions, to enrollment to kind of all the processes and procedures that are related to educating students in a higher ed environment. And so we definitely see this as a source of competitive advantage. There's a lot of innovation recently. And we certainly leverage a lot of technology solutions, not just in the back office, but also kind of in everything that we do, really. So the only part of our operation that is still analog, if you want to put it that way, is kind of our instruction. So
Alexander Sarlin:you mentioned the sort of piecemeal approach that others are taking to this concept of a three year degree. And you know, one of the sort of hard and fast rules that we've inherited, and in higher ed is the idea of 120 credits being required to graduate and what some three year programs do is have people work through the entire summer to get the 120. Others are trying to see if maybe a smaller number of credits could constitute a degree, your approach is really about lengthening semesters, so that every course is four credits instead of three, so that students actually can finish four years in three. That makes a lot of sense to me. But I'm curious what you see as the challenges of approach of lengthening the semester, I know that students will want to graduate faster. Do you see there being any issues with them staying enrolled, if you're extending the semester,
Unknown:you've certainly done your homework and everything that you described is exactly the way that we approach and structured the programs. We actually spent a lot of time thinking about how to deliver a manageable experience from an academic perspective without really bringing in additional stress and anxiety into the instructional process and the lives of students. Again, mental health and stress is such a big contributing factor to low graduation rates across the higher education space these days that we really had to think how to shorten the length of the program to make it more affordable but also allows students to graduate sooner without really burdening them. And there are different approaches out there. There's the college three initiative. To my understanding their efforts are free focused on convincing regulators that the 120 credit hours have to be reduced. Our approach was a little different. As you stated, we just decided to extend the length of the semesters, but not too much. The traditional semester is about 16 weeks long. A couple of years ago, actually, less than two years ago, the Department of Education enabled some innovation in that space by basically saying that universities are now free to choose the length of their semesters. And so they can be shorter, they can be longer. And we opted to go to an 18 week semester, just two weeks longer than usual. But by that simple change, as you correctly pointed out, actually, we are able to assign four credit hours to each of our classes instead of the traditional three. And that simple change allows us to avoid summer semesters. So we still only have a fall semester and a spring semester. They're just two weeks longer. But that still enables students to have a long summer vacation, to do internships, to relax, travel, whatever they want it to, in still graduate in three years. We also should note that we do not charge extra for these semesters in the compressed period of time. And previously, I mentioned that we charged$7,500 per semester, this is our post tuition, as they call it in higher ed, this is the advertised price. Actually, this is the maximum anybody is going to pay, we have financial aid, which is entirely need based. And we actually see a lot of our students who come from lower income brackets of the population qualify for need based scholarships that we have. And so the average tuition that people pay is something closer to $4,000 a semester, which is almost half of what the posted tuition is. So we really think that this is needed. This is timely. And again to your question about the three years or semesters or just slightly longer, no summer semesters. And classes are actually believe it or not only Monday through Thursday, 10am to 3pm. This is a way in which we want to eliminate stress. This reminds me of kind of an anecdote that I heard a professor had an 8am class one semester and then the following semester, she taught 1pm class. And then said, just by making this simple scheduling change, you will not believe how many grandparents lives saved. Students just don't show up to 8am classes or they sleep through them. So we wanted to again, be a very balanced experience a very happy experience, if you will stress free anxiety free, we are focused on the academic quality, we're focused on the academic rigor. But that doesn't mean that we have to make everybody's lives miserable. So to kind of in that spirit, actually, people are surprised, but when we tell them, but we do have a chief happiness officer on staff. This again speaks to kind of our desire to really offer a new model that's affordable, that is stress free. And that has the support mechanisms and the expertise in house to help everybody deal with stress and cope with that. And a lot of the existing solutions out there. I call them bandaid solutions, because they try to tackle the symptoms of the problem. So people say, oh, there's stress on campus, and people drop out because of that. And there's mental health crisis on campus. And we have all of these unfortunate incidents. And the solution usually is more mental health counseling, or more counselors, or more of something that we already have. And I think the solution really should be, we all should take a step back and think, what are the causes of this mental health crisis? What are the causes of stress and anxiety? How can we restructure the policies, the procedures, the programs to actually eliminate these things before they become a problem? And that is why we have classes only Monday through Thursday 10am to 3pm. That is why we have long summer vacations. That is why we have a great non disclosure policy. We want our students to not be competing with each other and stressing over grades. We want them to learn and to work with each other in teams and collaborate, just like all of us are doing in the real world. When you think about it. No person works individually in a cave somewhere. We all communicate even if it's virtually it's still in teams. So we want that to benefit ours. Students and at the same time really kind of keep their mental health in check and make the whole college experience really a pleasure rather than the stress that it usually is.
Alexander Sarlin:Well, I'm really excited about this very user centric model for higher ed, where it's faster, it's less expensive, and it's designed to make students less anxious and happy. And I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors with your first cohort. Thank you so much for being here. President Kolinsky of new you.
Unknown:Thank you for having me.
Alexander Sarlin:That wraps us up for the week in edtech for the week of April 29. Thank you to President Kalinsky of new you who had a really, really interesting model for how to shorten the bachelor's degree, and we're looking forward to seeing all of you right here next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the EdTech insiders podcast. If you liked the episode, remember to subscribe on Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're listening on Apple, please leave a rating and review so others can find the podcast. For more ed tech insiders content subscribe to the Ed Tech insiders newsletter at edtech insiders.substack.com
