Siya Raj Purohit is the Global Edtech & Workforce Development Lead at Amazon's AWS Marketplace and a General Partner at Pathway Ventures. She’s an operator-investor in the Edtech and Future of Work sectors who helps grow & invest in companies that drive economic mobility through innovative models of earning, learning, and community building.
Siya is an edtech veteran and a true insider, as an early employee at Udacity & Springboard, a graduate of Harvard GSE’s TIE program, and an author; she published her first book: “Engineering America” while she was an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin.
Resource Recommendations from Siya
Siya Raj Purohit is the Global Edtech & Workforce Development Lead at Amazon's AWS Marketplace and a General Partner at Pathway Ventures. She’s an operator-investor in the Edtech and Future of Work sectors who helps grow & invest in companies that drive economic mobility through innovative models of earning, learning, and community building.
Siya is an edtech veteran and a true insider, as an early employee at Udacity & Springboard, a graduate of Harvard GSE’s TIE program, and an author; she published her first book: “Engineering America” while she was an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin.
Resource Recommendations from Siya
Welcome to Season Two of edtech insiders, where we talk to the most interesting thought leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, educators, and investors, driving the future of education technology. I'm your host, Alex Sarlin, an edtech veteran with over 10 years of experience at top edtech company. Here Siya Raj Purohit is the global ed tech and Workforce Development Lead at AWS, and a general partner at pathway ventures. She's an operator investor in the EdTech and future of work sectors who helps grow and invest companies that drive economic mobility through innovative models of earning learning and community building. Siya is an ed tech veteran as an early employee at Udacity and springboard, a graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Education is Tae program. And as an author, she published her first book engineering America while she was an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin. Siya Welcome to Ed Tech insiders.
Siya Raj Purohit:Thanks so much for having me. Alex,
Alexander Sarlin:I'm really excited to talk to you today, you have a really interesting background in ITT Tech, you've been an operator and investor, ecosystem developer, all sorts of roles. I'd love to just in your own words, give us a little tour of how you started thinking about ad tech as an undergraduate up to your role now at AWS working with ad tech companies.
Siya Raj Purohit:I got into ad tech because in college, I felt locked out of certain career opportunities. And I didn't want people to feel the same way. So in college, I wanted to study engineering, but engineering this mean thought in a way that was really accessible to me. I saw many of my classmates drop out of the engineering program. And I wanted to understand what could be done to broaden the appeal of STEM education. I wanted to answer this question for myself first. So I called emailed some really famous people to ask for their opinions on why someone should study engineering. That turned into these amazing conversations about how important engineering is both for the country, but for individuals who are looking for like financially lucrative, as well as like inspiring careers. I turned my learning into this book about STEM education that I published my sophomore year. And since then, I guess, in the 10 years that have followed, I've worked in different ad tech startups, as well as in venture capital, investing in the sector, to try to make sure that people can learn employable skills in the ways that suit them the best, like anyone who aspires to have a better life or career should have the tools to do that. And I think that's what the tech industry enables. And so I worked in different elements of that. And now at AWS, that's my big focus on building up the AI tech and workforce development verticals for AWS.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, and you know, you've been at some of the companies that, you know, we talked about extensively on the podcast, I'd love to ask about some of your key learnings in those 10 years about the EdTech space, from your experiences at Udacity. And at Springboard, as well as in your graduate program.
Siya Raj Purohit:I joined Udacity in 2014, following the famous year, the MOOCs, and everyone's talking about how online education was going to change so much. So it was a really exciting time to be at Udacity, because the sector was going through a huge transformation. So Udacity and Coursera, had proven the massive reach and demand for the content. But in 2014, we had this challenge of trying to solve for completion rates and outcomes, like what did completing a Udacity course actually mean to employers, to individuals. And so at Udacity, we experimented with different modalities of learning, like recognizing that people's attention span could at this time they back in 2014, called only 6.5 minutes of video content before dropping off. And like now, as we know, it's like closer to two to three minutes of content that people can engage with. Yeah, very short. And also like collaborating with like universities and companies. So at Udacity, we built the master's degree in computer science for Georgia Tech, which is one of the very famous online programs now. And then also experimented Ananda degrees with Google and other companies to see like, how we can bring industry and academia into like this and enable this new technology to power education from companies and universities. So that was super exciting. And at Springboard, you focused on providing that additional support that students need to complete courses. I joined Springboard in 2017. And by then we had kind of like as an industry figured out like the online content piece figured out like interesting ways to present that, but recognize that there were certain students of actually a vast majority of students who needed additional support along with online content in order to learn that like mentorship community and support structure. So students can kind of complete these six to nine month long programs. So that's what Springboard focused on. And I guess overall, as the industry is evolved in so many different types of products have come out. What I really love is that like, there's like a variety of combinations that can be created to help support students and different types of learners
Alexander Sarlin:feels like you have been really at the forefront of a number of trends in the education technology space over the last 10 years. You mentioned the, the need for credentialing and Udacity famously sort of pivoted from a university partnership model to a company partnership model, and really leaned into that idea that the nanodegrees with Google, like you mentioned are the partnerships with all of these tech companies may actually have more value for somebody's career acceleration and their workforce development than even top universities. And that that was a big learning, I think, for the entire field. And then, of course, as you mentioned, Springboard is all about measuring engagement, keeping people moving through their educational experiences, because that's the only way they can achieve that transformation. It's amazing that you've been able to be right there for both of those. And of course, that Udacity degree is like a milestone in edtech.
Siya Raj Purohit:So yeah, Udacity like it was so interesting, because the were kind of like our course developers were the experts in online teaching. And when we went to like universities, such as Georgia Tech, we met professors who were obviously tenured and experts in their field, but they thought that teaching online was a teacher in front of a video camera. And we ended up going to work with them to showcase that online learning was much more than teaching in front of a video camera. Because there was so much more potential with online teaching. I think what was super interesting is at that time, as academics became more familiar, it's only technology. It was like a really interesting like shifting point for them. And seeing that industry, like we realize that Google would teach Android development better than any university professor at that time, because of course, they were the forefront of developing this. So bringing them in and teaching them that education piece was also really interesting. So Udacity was like a unique partner for these different types of both academic institutions, as well as companies to make that teaching piece much more accessible to different types of learners on that
Alexander Sarlin:the evolution in the understanding of what college and professional level teaching is, that came out of the MOOC revolution that came out of all of those platforms, I think really cannot be understated. I'm so on the same page. As you, you know, I was at Coursera, during those same years. And I remember Rick Levin, who was the CEO at the time, literally saying to the whole company, you don't even know what is happening at these universities. Because of all because of what we're doing and what all of these companies are doing. They're just rethinking what it means to teach. And they haven't done that in a really long time. And I really think it's one of the sort of hidden legacies of the MOOC movement that it actually seeped back into the university and gave them a whole different way to think about learning objectives and online delivery, and just a lot of different things. So you have this amazing experience at Udacity. At springboard, you wrote a book about education in college, and you're bringing this all to AWS, you're the global ed tech and Workforce Development Lead at AWS Marketplace, which is a one stop shop for businesses to procure enterprise software solutions through the cloud. So unpack that for us tell us a little bit about what the marketplace is and what it means for all of us in ad tech.
Siya Raj Purohit:So what the AWS Marketplace we're trying to do for b2b software buying what amazon.com did for consumer products. So we want to make it really easy for customers, in this case businesses and public sector organizations to discover, test, buy and deploy digital products. We have many leading ad tech companies selling to their end customers. So whether it's businesses or school districts through AWS Marketplace, and I joined the team to build up the ad tech vertical. So since then, we've launched about 22, Big Ed Tech sellers, and are aiming to grow that further. And I guess the key problem that I'm trying to solve is that there's so much good like a tech innovation happening. And it's not making it into the hands of students across the country, whether it's again, K through 12, or even on workforce development. And we're trying to figure out how to solve those issues to make that tech much more easy to access in the classroom.
Alexander Sarlin:It's it really makes a lot of sense. And I think this has been a problem in the tech world for quite a while that you have so many entrepreneurs coming up with new solutions. Some of those solutions continue to grow and become really established players in the space but even when they do, so many people don't even know they exist, because they don't do a lot of marketing. They don't always have a lot of budget for b2b marketing. And you know the ability to be found on a marketplace as prominent as Amazon as AWS is, is quite amazing. And so many companies share the AWS back end that it can be a very smooth transition. So when you go on the AWS Marketplace and look at eLearning solutions, you mentioned have been 20 Something partners already. There are all kinds of b2b edtech companies already there, this Pluralsight Udemy, business Udacity, of course, learn platform Coursera. You know, in more tell us how this ecosystem works. What are the advantages to the companies listing on marketplace? And what are the advantages for businesses in Pickering licenses to these tools on the marketplace, and a
Siya Raj Purohit:high level we're trying to bring speed and ease to the software buying process. So companies like CrowdStrike, have talked in their annual earnings about like how marketplace has cut down their time to close a deal by 50%. So as far as the ditches go for customers, we basically want to make faster deals we want to get out of making the procurement and sales cycle so long that it deters people from getting access to the tech that they want. So for customers, faster deals, and the ability to discover and purchase software more quickly, have AWS be the vendor of record, and most importantly, be able to utilize their AWS spend commitment towards buying those third party software solutions. We also run different promotions from time to time, which provide customers with credits and other perks of being able to tap into that spend commitment and work with AWS reps to find like the right types of solutions is key for customers.
Alexander Sarlin:So this is a little out of my area of expertise. So I want to make sure I'm understanding the AWS spend that you're talking about is basically a budget that a company has that maybe accelerated through promotions and various things. And that's and that budget can be used with the marketplace to procure education licenses.
Siya Raj Purohit:Yep, that's exactly right. So companies have typically like multi year budgets with AWS that they use to purchase like different AWS solutions. And they can utilize that to purchase from marketplace as well.
Alexander Sarlin:That's powerful. Yeah, and AWS is so ubiquitous, it's one of the absolute top if not the top cloud providers in technology, that so many different companies are on both sides of that of that marketplace.
Siya Raj Purohit:So for sellers, the big draw is the opportunity to work with AWS reps to close deals. So our AWS reps get competent quarter relief for marketplace transactions. So they're much more incentivized to help their partners discover the best solutions for them through marketplace. So like Pluralsight, for example, has been a partner of ours for over three years, they were an early adopter of marketplace, and has really leaned in to grow with us and reached like their end customers through marketplace. They've also become a big trading partner for AWS, as well. So like 1000s of our teammates have learned cloud skills from a cloud guru, a Pluralsight. Company,
Alexander Sarlin:really interesting. So So all of these sorts of players can come together in the Amazon ecosystem, you can have Amazon reps actually helping sell and education seats to companies because they're being purchased through the marketplace. And then obviously, companies get much more exposure, they get visibility for a humongous number of enterprise clients. And you get more detail than that. But, you know, just as you mentioned, Amazon itself is a marketplace that connects buyers and sellers. It makes a lot of sense that this is sort of the b2b version. And I think it's very exciting for the ecosystem. We talk a little bit about the content companies that are on marketplace, the Udemy is horrible sites. They have a lot of video content. Udacity. But they're also learning management systems beyond the marketplace. So due to L Brightspace. Is on their desire to learn. We see certification providers like a cloud girl from Pharrell site, we see cloud video vendors like culture, there's really a lot of different education services. How do you think about these sorts of different categories of edtech companies on marketplace? And who else are you interested in being listed there?
Siya Raj Purohit:In the early days of marketplace, the main customers for developers and DevOps teams, as you can imagine, like that's the typical business user for AWS. So early on, they were using marketplace to purchase different types of tech tools. But over the years that's expanded to include like line of business buyers and procurement teams. So how they categorize in the backend is by type of solution. So as you describe, like the different types of use cases in education, but also the persona of the customer. So we have teams that help sell to K through 12 school districts and public sector universities, and others that are lined with like corporate buyers, like the businesses that like to typically purchase a Pluralsight or Coursera. And so we have mapped the account team to have coverage across all of our AWS customers. and through marketplace and the Amazon partner network, sellers have the opportunity to engage with AWS reps that support those target customers and tag team to close opportunities.
Alexander Sarlin:That's really interesting. So, AWS Marketplace, does some of the thinking around sort of targeting for each of these edtech companies. So you have a company like Skillsoft, which would be obviously selling to big enterprise customers, but then there are others that might sell, as you say, to K 12 school districts that are, you know, focused on on K 12 education or totally different type. And the, and Amazon and AWS actually play a role in helping connect the right solution to the right to the right purchaser.
Siya Raj Purohit:Yes, that's right. Our goal in the end of the day is to make sure that companies are able to find like the right software for them in the quickest time possible, because the real work actually starts after and we want to make the sales process as like easy and
Alexander Sarlin:efficient for them as possible. It makes sense. So what other companies might be interested in being listed on the AWS Marketplace, I'd love to hear the vision that you have for the ad tech sector on marketplace.
Siya Raj Purohit:So looking forward, my goal is to continue building the vertical like Sunday, I hope that like every tech company that's built on AWS sells through AWS to their customers. But I used to recommend your capital V realized like that the sales cycle at universities, like the average sales cycle is now 18 months lock. And that's a really long time for a new startup to be able to make the sale like the venture funding probably runs out sooner than they make that sale. And so we want to make that piece simpler and easier for school districts and businesses to find the right solution for them. Because again, at the end of the day, there's so much cool tech out there, we don't want the sales process to be the reason why companies don't make it to their customers.
Alexander Sarlin:So to extrapolate out, it sounds like you want even relatively earlier stage that tech companies including venture funded, you know, maybe series A or seed stage companies, if they're looking to find this type of Enterprise Client, and they have a limited runway, they should be coming to AWS Marketplace, because it's a way to very rapidly expand their reach. Exactly. So
Siya Raj Purohit:over time marketplace will become better discovery as well. Like in the future, I see like marketplace being able to provide like the right types of targeted advertisements, or whatever else would be like the right medium to help customers discover products. Overall, we have over 12,000 companies in the marketplace catalog, as I mentioned about 22 ad tech sellers, but that is growing quickly. And the goal is to be able to help any ad tech companies scale. And again, they'll get better at Discovery over time to enable new sellers to be able to start with marketplace as well.
Alexander Sarlin:Well hearing that, you know, there are 22 companies on there at full 1000. It sounds like it's a nascent and fast growing section of the marketplace, ecosystem or the marketplace catalog and maybe some of our listeners who run a tech companies would be very interested in reaching out and seeing if they would be possible partners for the for the marketplace. We talk a lot on this podcast about about the big tech companies and how they've played this sort of unusual and sometimes outsize role in education. Google does a lot in education, Microsoft, Mehta and Amazon, they have deep pockets, they have the ability to really have transformative effects on the tech ecosystem in a variety of ways. Amazon has, you know, bought a tech company 10 marks a number of years ago, they've created a platform for education materials for teachers in the past, and recently Amazon's main site launched a courses part of the catalog where you can actually purchase online courses easily through the main Amazon website. Those are some of the things I've seen, you know, Amazon do as a really close and longtime ed tech observer. I'm curious about how you think about the different initiatives that AWS is doing as another really large tech play to benefit the tech ecosystem.
Siya Raj Purohit:We have a couple of cool teams at both Amazon and AWS working on the tech sector, like the idea overall is to support every stage of company like from startup through big ad tech and being able to grow with AWS. I know that from the outside, both like given how big AWS and Amazon are, it's sometimes difficult for individuals to find the right teams and get the right support from AWS. So I'll call it some of those interesting initiatives that we're working on. In case it's helpful or like listeners. So I guess the first initiative is called AWS at start. It's this awesome organization that helps early stage startups that are building on AWS. So being part of at stripe provides startups with like startup credits, access to solutions architects, but most importantly provides this kind of community that startups can learn From and engage with partners and investors and more broadly, like deeply connected with the AWS network. So at startups demo days, like content and support the young startups and like their CTOs in growing in their roles, so highly recommend founders check out AWS at stripe. And then as companies grow, there are other teams that can help too. So another one is like Amazon K through 12, and higher ed teams. So they focus on like different types of research and support companies across those verticals. And also host this conference called AWS imagine, that's our annual ed tech conference. And finally, there is I guess, the 13th would be the AWS partner, network and marketplace. So these are the communities that I was talking about the AWS partner network. APN is a global community of partners that leverages like programs, expertise and resources to help customers build market and sell offerings. And finally, Amazon career choice is this amazing program that just launched about a year ago, that provides education content from third party providers, to our hourly workers, and enable them to like learn relevant skills with platforms such as Springboard on career choice. And so highly recommend companies check out these different teams for whatever is the right fit for them.
Alexander Sarlin:I'm so glad you broke that down bit by bit. And of course, AWS, Ed start and the imagining, and career choice, we've covered all of those on the podcast, but somehow, you know, so it's hard to get all the different pieces of the AWS and Amazon ad tech landscape into the into one place. So I think that was a really helpful rundown. And so we've talked a lot about AWS, it's really becoming an incredible glue that sort of puts together so many different types of tech companies. By being the underlying cloud architecture behind both sellers and buyers. They can it can connect people across geographies across sectors, and make companies or schools aware of ed tech companies they've never even heard of. And I'm sure that's very exciting to hear for our listeners. And I'm sure they're thinking a lot of different things about what it might mean for them individually, or their country or their their startups. I want to shift the conversation a little bit because another area of expertise for you that I find super interesting as well, is the concept of the future of work. And you know, this is a phrase that can mean many different things to different people. So I'd like to start by just asking broadly, how do you think about the future of work and the role of education in it?
Siya Raj Purohit:Like you said, future work is such a broad term, the areas that I focus on are about how people earn a living, learn and play simple skills, and have the right types of communities around them for their growth, basically earning learning and community building.
Alexander Sarlin:So earning learning and community are the pillars of your thinking about future work. I think that's a very catchy framework, it makes a lot of sense. Let's talk about the earning piece, because I think that's one that the education traditional education system doesn't always calculate, they don't always know or focus on the earning potential of their learners. We've just seen a credential engine report that counts over a million credentials out there that can be earned from all sorts of different providers. How do you think about alternative credentials, and whether traditional higher education will maintain its monopoly as the route to the middle class,
Siya Raj Purohit:I feel so strongly about this, there are three elements that I believe are materializing into anxiety and disappointment for the middle class. So one is like the$1.6 trillion in student debt. Second is increasingly job skills gap amongst college grads, and then overall, the college admissions fraud and like the kind of stress that comes to the college admissions overall. So given the crunch from top schools, I feel like the highest achieving students, the middle class, are now going to state schools which are getting pickier themselves. And if this trend continues, middle class families will have to keep aiming for lower tier schools that cost more and are worth less, which is a dangerous place to be for universities. So I think that these families will have to assess whether they want to deal with that uncertainty or going to just any school, or find another way to build a strong like financially stable career. I think that this is a significant opportunity for entrepreneurs who want to enable those alternative options and credentials in edtech. I think that we initially thought the disruption would come from the availability of the right tools that enable alternative credentialing, both in the education and the talent tech assessment tools. But now I believe that that shift will come from talented individuals getting squeezed out of those traditional opportunities and looking for those alternatives, which are thankfully available through the tech sector.
Alexander Sarlin:It's a really interesting take. You know, we talked on the podcast about the enrollment crisis, and the demographic problems that higher education is facing, but that none of that really applies to the top tier of colleges, which is what you're referring to here. And the idea of people being squeezed out of those top tiers squeezed out of the next here and then reaching the point where, where their higher education where their degree may not be worth the cost, and then having to decide what do I actually do here? Feels very precious. And I think that's a really good take. And I imagine that, you know, the community side of that is also really interesting, because that's something that higher education has also provided, it's often been sort of under stated that that's one of the main things that higher education does, it creates networks, it creates friendships, romances, you know, a place to go in your early life and going through 30s. How do you think about community in the EdTech world,
Siya Raj Purohit:I really believe that communities kind of being unbundled from the rest of the education stack. Because when you think about like community providers, such as like chief or ondeck, or any of the other targeted communities that achieved to help you connect with people who are in the similar life stages you and navigate, like the types of complexities that you're dealing with at that life stage. I feel like companies are doing a good job of that. And so I don't know if universities will be like required for that community. There's a startup that I really like called 20, which is building that community for people like going through that defining decade of their 20s and interact with other 20 somethings that are also really passionate about like advancing their careers, navigating those life issues, such as like relationships, and first breakups and all those kind of like issues. There's a company called the Grande which I love, because it tackles important questions such as like, I'm like, in my 30s Do I want to have kids or not these kind of like, like very sensitive questions and like very, like important life stages that we relied on, like colleges and grad schools to do in the past, are getting unbundled. And I think that they will enable learners to be able to find like the right types of people, communities for themselves, even beyond the confines of a university campus,
Alexander Sarlin:it's a really interesting way to look at it, you know, I've used the grand myself as a way to find community. And it's been, it's so interesting, because there, the way that people interact in that setting is super facilitated in a very emotional way. It's really about sharing your personal life and getting into things that are far beyond what you traditionally think of as a sort of online class or community. So I really do see what you mean by that. And it sounds like overall, you're, you know, you're bullish on the ability of the ed tech sector to really start to provide a lot of the core values or a lot of the core needs for people who are pursuing education, maybe even, you know, starting to threaten traditional higher ed, it's a really interesting moment. I want to ask, that's something that's super hot right now. And I'm really curious what you think about it, Chad GPT, and other step changes in the sort of artificial intelligence landscape are making a lot of news. How do you from your perspective at AWS think about AI in education? And is there a risk for automation for various types of jobs, or will AI create more jobs?
Siya Raj Purohit:So I have a 20 year old brother who is fresh out of college and works in consulting, we were texting the other day, and he was giving me one word responses. So I teased him about not getting too comfortable in Israel. It's my brother since Chad GPT is threatening to replace him and possibly a better text conversations with me. And he says GPT four is already threatening my job as a consultant. Now it's coming after my job as a brother to like, I never get a break. It was just a really funny take. But obviously, this is such a hot topic, since just today, actually, the New York Education Department blocked to chat GPT on school devices and networks. So I understand why districts and schools are struggling to respond to this new tech, because suddenly, like the traditional writing assignments have become sort of like obsolete. And they that's obviously a huge problem for teachers across the country, and world. So I believe that the new tech is not going anywhere. And we have to think about different ways to build an assess student understanding and critical thinking skills. So like, can our English class become more focused on interpreting like different essays created by AI, like thinking of like areas of improvement elements of like emotion and like human connection and experience that can be weaved into those narratives to make them stronger? So I think at a high level, people are rightfully comparing this to like the rise of Google and how finding answers online made the skill of searching through encyclopedias and library resources. Just like much more like quote unquote, like obsolete But given that adults are using Chad GPT, to like form emails and do professional work, I don't think we should deprive students of the tech, but rather take on this like somewhat cumbersome task of rewriting our English curriculum to align with this. And as far as disruption to jobs goes, I honestly think that this is just another powerful tool and a professional toolkit. So along with like LinkedIn, StackOverflow, and Google suite of products, we're all just going to get better at communicating with one another and automating certain parts of our jobs. But I think that the need for ingenuity when it comes to like new product development, partnerships, growth and other functions will still be a very big need.
Alexander Sarlin:I love that metaphor of of, you know, when Google first was launched, there was this feeling of oh, suddenly research means something very different. It's not about micro features. And you know, and going through card catalogs and a library, it's, it's all in your phone or on your computer, I even think about older metaphors, like, you know, I've seen people talk about this as almost like the advent of the calculator, or whenever there's a technology that sort of automates something that we're all used to doing, we all have to rethink what it means to educate. And, you know, you can imagine a world in which just like, with a calculator, you still take, we still teach young kids how to, you know, add and divide and, and do exponents, even though they could do it automatically with a calculator. To up to a certain point, you do want the deep core skills, but after that, hey, you have a calculator, maybe it doesn't make sense to do you know, 10,000 reps of a division problems. And I think there's the same kind of thing is going to happen to your point in with with English curriculum and with arts. And with, you know, a number of different types of fields are going to be disrupted in exactly that way where it's, it's a, you get this enormous new powerful tool, you still need some level of base education, but then learning that tool is about the the best thing you can do for your future work. Yes, exactly. So speaking of AI and education, another field that AI has been impinging on is engineering, it actually can write code and make game elements and things like that. You've thought a lot about engineering, you've written a whole book about engineering education. So I wanted to throw out a couple of stats about engineering from Georgetown's Center on Education and Workforce, and hear how you think about this. So the highest paying majors are science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, STEM majors, health majors, and business majors. And people who pursue those degrees get $65,000 or more annually, which means that they actually get more than $3 million more over their lifetime, than the lowest paying majors, which tend to be things that are very humanity based. Their early childhood education is the lowest earning major social work, teaching, education, visual arts, drama, theology, these are all the things that are really sort of what makes us human. So we're getting this funny world where engineering just continues to rise and push out all of the liberal arts and the sort of helping professions. How do you see this world? You know, do you think that this is continuing to go that way where engineering and stem will continue to be so much more lucrative than the more humanistic skills? Or will things start to change in the future?
Siya Raj Purohit:I think there are two parts to this question. So one is like the financially lucrative piece. And the second is, I guess, the combination and stacking of different skills to the financially lucrative piece. Yes, STEM degrees are more financially lucrative, and I believe that they'll stay the same. Actually, about 10 years ago, I wrote this article called Open Letter to freshmen choose well, not all college majors are created equal. And that's when I like kind of shared my research, which was they still near this time, I guess, is much more common knowledge now about the discrepancy between this. But at that time, I was at UT Austin, which is a huge school and has all of these different types of programs, and learners of all types going through them. And for freshmen at that time, I wanted them to recognize that there is a big discrepancy between the majors, even though initially, it may look like oh, your UT Austin and degrees will be worth almost the same when you graduate. But a UTCs degree is very different than a UT drama degree. And so wanted to call that out. And I still think that's true today. So if you're studying for financial security, and to get like more innovative jobs, STEM is still the way to go. And I think it's going to remain that way. But then the second part is like the stackability like what kind of future careers exist, right. So in that piece is where the liberal arts education has a big part. So I think that like a combination of like foundational STEM skills, plus the humanities and liberal arts makes for a really great thing. Good news. So people who have become like better people, managers and innovators more broadly, or influencers in different categories have a good combination of that, like STEM education, or like some understanding of the thought process behind that, combined with like this liberal arts and like the fun elements, that liberal arts enables you to just like think outside the box in a creative and humanistic way that you mentioned. So and coming back to like this point about AI that we talked about. So I think that AI will take away a lot of the tasks that can be automated in both stem and liberal arts. But I believe that what we need is thinkers who have some level of mastery in both skill sets, to be able to kind of imagine and create new companies and ideas.
Alexander Sarlin:That's, I like that. I like that vision, the idea that rather than thinking of the humanities and the liberal arts as sort of the other side of the spectrum, when you look at the earnings, it feels like the earnings spectrum, it really feels like they are. But if you think about them as skills and ideas and ways of looking at the world that actually can come together to transcend either side, you know that somebody who understands theology or elementary education or visual arts may be able to do something even more innovative and interesting, if they also know stem, rather than thinking about it as you get that philosophy degree. And it's just not worth anything, which I think is like what many parents start to, you know, see higher ed, as that idea that you can put the pieces together and get something more than the sum of its parts, I think is is an inspiring way to look at it. I haven't heard people phrase it that way in the past.
Siya Raj Purohit:So like, I guess my key takeaway is that everyone should study foundational STEM skills. And then they can decide what other pieces of interest that they can stack together. Because tech is going to be the underlying current across every type of sector an idea. So like, even if it's like religion that you want to study, or like cultural studies, that are combinations of how tech can help you advance that in terms of being able to get into the right audience, help them like consume content in an interesting way. Whatever the means would be, I think the tech skill set is the foundation towards that.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, and, you know, just tossing out that, you know, Amazon head could play a really interesting role in that future, because they are still the biggest bookseller, they have good reads as a sub brand. They think a lot about, you know about people's humanities and a lot of things in that world. And of course, they have AWS and and all the certifications, and so many things that advanced people skills in the tech world. So it could be, you know, one of a couple of big tech companies that might be able to really bring those skill sets together. I'm curious if that sounds like possible at all to you, or are we way out in in fantasy land?
Siya Raj Purohit:I definitely think it is possible, I do think Amazon will play a big part in the future like of education more broadly across all of these different segments. I think the first thing that Amazon needs to do is enabled some of the infrastructure behind helping these kind of companies grow. So marketplace and our, like different types of initiatives to help startups and big companies are all the foundational steps. And beyond that, I think we'd be able to help those companies grow and expand to find the right types of customers improve and just innovate with us to be able to help achieve like more outcomes in education more broadly. And long term.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, it's a great point, I remember when Coursera first started, its business vertical, part of the thinking was, hey, you know, if you're a company, and you are purchasing Coursera, seats for the, you know, for the cloud skills for the data science for the machine learning, you're also getting classes about Egyptology and drama and psychology and all of these amazing classes from top universities. And the idea was, they could really go together. But you're right, that it's the only go together within sort of closed ecosystems and the idea of common infrastructure and underlying tech that allows all the pieces of the of the ecosystem to play together smoothly for purchases to happen smoothly for reviews for efficacy, for all sorts of things. It's a really exciting vision of the future. So you know, we always close up our interviews, this has been really interesting with with two questions. You've talked about a lot of different really interesting trends in the future of work in infrastructure in in AI, what you if you had to just pick one that is just on your mind a lot these days, what would you tell our listeners that you think is getting more and more interesting?
Siya Raj Purohit:So I spend a lot of time thinking about communities. So we talked about a couple of great companies in the space like 20, grand and others. And I think about like, what the outcome of these communities long term looks, because obviously in universities, there is a sense of like exclusivity of the community just given the criteria for admission and like the kind of fold and it was owned by the admissions directors. And so I'm curious about whether communities will scale over time, because we do recognize that in the end, like communities that become too big, become complicated in different ways. And engagement falls. So I'm very curious in the future of that dynamic and how it plays out, especially again, focused on like the growth piece. So I focused on people's careers, and like navigating those, like specific kinds of an education, college and those kinds of things. So that's something I think a lot about, and would love to hear about cool companies in the space. Yeah, that's really
Alexander Sarlin:interesting of all the things we talked about, I think there is an incredible need for community and tools and places and methods to to maintain community among learners, especially after COVID, where people have been enormous ly siloed. And school was disrupted in such a deep way around the world. I think bringing people back together, both children and adults, is going to be a big space as a lot of opportunity to really help people. You know, finally, what is one resource you would recommend? For people who want to learn more about any of the topics we talked about today could be a favorite book, a blog, newsletter or a podcast? Where will you present people?
Siya Raj Purohit:So I'll put two resources that I really like. One is Matt towers newsletter for weekly updates in the tech space. I think he does a great job of synthesizing what all is happening in ad tech on a weekly basis, so highly recommend my towers newsletter. And the second resource is Adam grants books. So Adam Grant is a professor at Penn and one of my favorite thinkers about like different types of frameworks for nature and the future of work. So I really liked his books like originals, rethink and give and take. And I think that his weekly podcast and newsletter are a great way to think about the future like combinations of different types of skills and the the types of jobs that will have in the future.
Alexander Sarlin:Great recommendations of manpower, a great friend of the pod as listeners know and Adam Grant stuff is is amazing. We read give and take as a company era and discussed it because it was such an interesting way to look at sort of corporate culture as a culture of reciprocity. This has been so interesting. The CEA Raj perot hit global edtech and Workforce Development Lead at AWS and a general partner at pathway ventures. Thanks so much for being here with us at Tech insiders.
Siya Raj Purohit:Thanks so much, Alex.
Alexander Sarlin:Thanks for listening to this episode of Ed Tech insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the tech community. For those who want even more Ed Tech Insider, subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack.