ASU+GSV: Fadl, CEO of Nexford University

Fadl and Nexford University are on a mission to solve the world's biggest challenge: education. As a next-generation university, Nexford is set to positively impact millions of lives globally.

Nexford’s two core principles are:

• A lack of education is the root cause of most global challenges; and
• People should be able to access economic opportunities, irrespective of physical location

Nexford is partnered with Microsoft, IBM and LinkedIn – who provide tools, courses and programmes to enrich the learning experience. Nexford also uses machine learning and AI to create a data and skills-driven curriculum designed to match employers’ needs.

Fadl became an entrepreneur at 18, and has 20 years’ experience founding digital marketing and technology businesses. He founded and managed the MENA region's leading digital engagement agency - its clients included: Fortune 500s, US State Department, International and government organizations.

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Alexander Sarlin: 0:05

Welcome to EdTech insiders where we speak with founders, operators, investors and thought leaders in the education technology industry, and report on cutting edge news in this fast evolving field from around the globe. From AI to xr to K 12 to l&d, you'll find everything you need here on edtech insiders. And if you like the podcast, please give us a rating and a review so others can find it more easily. I'm here at ASU GSV. With bottle of next furred University, it's great to see you again, we talked last year at this conference. And what you're doing is so inspiring, low cost, global education, credentialed with degrees. Tell us what has been going on with next for between a year ago. And now.

Fadl Al Tarzi: 0:54

Great to be with you again, Alex today. Since last year, I'd say the most significant developments have been first we got national accreditation in the US less than two months ago, which is the result of I'd say about three or four years of significant effort. Now that unlocks a number of things that we couldn't do in the past is the most important of which I would say is launching new programs. So we're looking forward to launching a number of new programs over the coming months and year. The second is it unlocks, I would say a lot more mobility for our graduates who are looking to either pursue further education or pursue specific jobs. Beyond accreditation, I would say number of graduates, we have a significantly increase, I would say over the coming couple of months, we're approaching our first 2000 graduates already. And we're starting to really look a lot more on career outcomes. And you know what our learners and graduates accomplishing post graduation. So that's really a big shift in our focus, you know, sort of balancing with growth, the prospects of our graduates and focusing on how they're actually using what they've learned that next read going forward.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:59

That's really exciting. National Accreditation is a big, big milestone. So congratulations, you said only a couple of months ago, yeah. And then seeing where every type of education is often not always, but a means to an end, students often see it as a means to an end. So it's so important to see if the mobility that you're providing is really panning out into, you know, viable, fulfilling careers. And, you know, we're here at ASU GSV, you have been laser focused on providing education at a cost that people can truly afford. And that's something I actually haven't heard a lot about this year, often because we're talking about AI in a recession. But I'd love to hear you know, as you make your way around the conference this year, do you see other sort of fellow equity travelers that you are connected to and feel like, okay, yes, we're still making these really making inroads on this type of opening up meaningful education to people who had never afford it,

Fadl Al Tarzi: 2:55

you know, I think is definitely a theme, Alex, but it's not a core theme. So in a versus AI is probably taking 5% of conversation. Having said that, you know, as number of impact folks that I've seen throughout the past few days from impact investment perspective, also a lot of tools or platforms around how to fund tuition, more creatively, variations of income share. But frankly, what we haven't seen a lot of is people addressing the cost at the core, which as you know, that has been our focus from the very beginning. So it's not about finding alternative or creative ways to fund and unaffordable tuition, which we think there's been probably too much focus on that angle. So it's an expensive product. How do we get creative to allow people to pay for it was just sort of like the root cause of consumerism and society overwhelmed, right? How do we allow people to buy things with 1000, when they only have 100? And that's one of the root cause of many of the issues that we have, whether in real estate or commercial, and so forth. So education has followed a similar path. So unfortunately, no, but I think with AI today, there's a huge opportunity for institutions to actually look at how we can use AI, not for gimmicks, but to actually make our costs a lot more affordable. Again, not to be cynical, talking to have met probably about, I'd say, five university presidents over the past few days. And a bunch of other you know, execs total probably made about 10 universities over the past three days. I wouldn't say any of them have listed, you know, reducing cost as a priority is just not a priority across schools. On the contrary, the priority is how can we increase and find alternative way to fund that tuition structure? Now, outside the US public sort of debt infrastructure, which is now approaching $2 trillion in the US, just doesn't exist. So by definition, if you're following that business model, you've alienated 90% of the world.

Alexander Sarlin: 4:39

Very well said we covered how Yale and some of the other Ivy League tuitions just passed $80,000 total for room and board and tuition per year. And I went on a little mini rant about how ridiculous these schools are to be continually raising prices in a moment when students are telling them in no uncertain terms was that, you know, they're not sure if four year degrees are worth it anymore. More than 50% of people said that in a poll last week, student debt has surpassed credit card debt. You mentioned this sort of disease of consumerism, credit card debt used to be the signal of that now it's student debt. Now it's student debt. That's exactly double credit card debt. So yeah, I think your approach, you know, it really stuck with me last year, because we talked about this, the way you reduce the cost of education is by really taking a sort of fine look at what all the steps are, and actually delivering a high quality education, and then not just taking them for granted, not just saying, of course, we need all these 200 steps, which ones don't we need, which ones might be automatable, which ones might be a lot cheaper if we do them a different way. And it feels like there is the potential with this AI moment to do that. But you're right, I haven't heard very many people looking at that, from that angle. Tell me about that.

Fadl Al Tarzi: 5:57

100%, we were just talking about this with a colleague earlier this morning, Alex remembering our seed funding days, like maybe four years ago, and people asked us, How are you going to be able to deliver at that cost? And we made a huge gamble at the time, you know, we said, automation is going to get there AI is gonna kick in and have US equity type AI, what do you mean? Like, is it gonna answer people, it's not gonna work, it seems like a long shot. And we're here we are today. I think that's probably, you know, the top two or three areas where AI can be used as really to automate binary functions and tasks that don't need humans to actually do. And to your point, that was what we call the unbundled University model is how we think about it as really thinking about the smallest unit of measure, and analyzing what is the cost per task. So it's not the learner to faculty ratio, for instance, the way traditional schools think about it is the cost per task, and then thinking about what is required to accomplish that task. So, you know, at the highest level, it's which tasks are necessary, like you alluded to, but then second is out of the ones that aren't necessary, they fall in one of three buckets. The first is this can be completely automated. Second is, it can be semi automated. And the third is it needs a human to do it. But if it needs a human to do it, we then sub sort of bucket those into more categories. Is it high value? Or is it low to mid value? So we don't assign tasks based on conventional wisdom admissions is a great example, like a lot of what admissions officers do doesn't actually require any knowledge of higher ed. And this may sound controversial, but it's the truth, like a simple task could be looking at the name on your passport, does it match the name on your transcript? Right, that is something admissions, I'm saying that's the only thing they do. But that's at scale, there's 1000s of hours going into that. So a computer can definitely do that. And if for any reason, it can't, if you look at assigning that task based on the skill required, the skill required is reading or even more. So it's actually character matching. So you don't need to have any other form of knowledge of the task. So if you think about it, that way, you can all of a sudden start assigning tasks based on the skills required to accomplish them, and therefore your operating costs become significantly lower.

Alexander Sarlin: 8:07

I admire that type of thinking so much. And it's really interesting, because I've been in edtech, for years in many different places. And I think it's just so refreshing. It's funny, because it you know, when you describe it in my way, I almost think of, you know, Amazon, I think of like companies that figure out how to absolutely optimize to the penny, you know, their production process and their delivery process. And then you think about education, and it's just so bloated, people just higher and higher and higher and higher, more and more people to throw them at them, especially in higher ed. And it just feels like a, I don't know, a breath of fresh air to see education clearly as something that you're trying to get the best possible quality at the lowest internal cost. I just don't think that people think that way. They just don't. And it really feels exciting to me. I've heard Michael Crow say that I've heard Arizona State, things like that, but not very many other people do. So yeah. Do you think it's going to catch on in this age of automation now that this stuff is possible? Do you think other people are going to start making their you know, flow diagrams and making sense of it the way you guys have

Fadl Al Tarzi: 9:13

not to sound cynical, but I think institutions will adopt technology, right? It's inevitable, most of them will adopt a lot more technology, but I don't think they're going to adopt technology with the objective of actually reducing tuition. So the savings that they will potentially achieve will end up being spent elsewhere on maybe fancier campuses or at some other some other expense item. Because there's just it's almost like an unspoken Alliance across our traditional schools that we don't want to be reducing tuition, guys, let's collectively. So in an industry where supply demand doesn't actually dictate pricing, because it's all artificially inflated as a result of title four, right? So if there wasn't the availability of student loans in the first place, the market would have to dictate like many other industries, right. So having said that, we definitely Gonna see no more technology adoption. But ultimately, I just want to be clear that we're not against the you know, whether it's the ivy League's whether it's because like if someone wants to pay the$1,000, that's perfectly fine, because they're seeing they're deriving value from that. But our issue is, there needs to be a much wider range of choices. And there needs to be a model, which we hope we've not proven, can happen, which is delivering comparable outcomes at a fraction of the cost of traditional universities. That's really where, you know, we think a lot more development needs to happen. There needs to be a wider range of options that are proven that because consumers aren't, I think, questioning the four year degree in itself, what their question more is ROI. So to your point, like the biggest issue, I think is not about AI really is about the biggest question mark is what is the metric that we are going to use to measure our success? Once universities decide that that metric actually needs to be ROI was ROI on my education, investment, everything will change. But no one's talking ROI. It's not a term like, I don't think there's there was maybe one session out of maybe 300 that had the word ROI. And it's over the past few days.

Alexander Sarlin: 11:05

I totally agree. I don't think that students are rebelling against college education. I don't think they're rebelling against the four year degree. I think they're rebelling against going into massive debt, and then not knowing that they can get out of it. And if they drop out of school, at any point that comes with no societal benefit at all. It's a very, it's a loaded system. I think it's very inspiring. So I have a maybe slightly provocative question. I know you're out of DC, you mentioned how the government funding has sort of artificially propped up the price of education. Could you foresee a world in which the US government says, hey, you know, what automation is here? Hey, colleges, we're going to start cutting financial aid, because obviously, you can streamline your operations and make costs, like, should they be thinking like that? It's kind of exciting to think about, it's a

Fadl Al Tarzi: 11:55

super exciting question. And equally provocative answer would be sometimes, you know, these are the benefits of, you know, political systems that don't value democracy as much, right. So when you have a fantastic sort of, you know, a leader who's able to enforce particular policies, like you can try to imagine, you know, even if the President wanted to enforce that sort of policy, you can start to imagine the process and how complicated you know, that process would actually be to see to come to fruition, but 100%, I would think that makes a lot of sense. There's no doubt about it. What is the point of, you know, funding, even from a practical perspective, what is the point of funding, you know, billions in r&d, a lot of which, you know, come from the private sector and the government sector, if we're not going to actually apply that r&d to our operations? And that's a big question mark around, you know, higher ed, and a lot of the r&d comes out of universities, which is fantastic. And private sector ends up monetizing that. But the irony is, the university doesn't necessarily benefit from what it's invented itself. So it ends up you know, making, you know, for profit companies, not universities, or corporations, essentially richer, but the university doesn't benefit from it, which goes back to the learners. Right, you know, who find that that r&d? Yeah, so when there are grants, but there's also a lot of tuition money actually funding that r&d,

Alexander Sarlin: 13:12

I think of it's like, silly to even talk about, but the fact the President tried to remove all student debt, and instead of, and somehow, that wasn't seen as a clear when when tons of governors, I think it was suing the President saying they didn't have the authority. And now this thing is stuck in court for years, and it may not pass at all. And it's just like, you really wonder sometimes about, you know, the polarized democracy that we live in, and how really, really, really common sense things in my mind, you know, can just not happen. So continuing the provocation, I want to, let's keep with it. One thing that I've noticed, it's come up a couple of times, you know, today in conversation is that the Chinese government is very far ahead of us in AI regulation. Some of it is very weird regulation. Some of it is you know, AI must be used for the cause, you know, to help the party, nobody wants that. But some of it is actually pretty clever. Like I've said, on the podcast, many times, nobody is allowed in China to put an AI generated image out without a watermark on it. So that to avoid disinformation, to avoid cheats to avoid scams. And we're gonna run face first, into disinformation and scams and cheats, because our government just doesn't have the, I don't know, we'll slash technological acumen to realize where these things might go. And your point about you know, sometimes certain trends or decisions, you might not want everybody, especially technological decisions where nobody has any precedent. You might not want this to be this 30 year debate is sometimes you just gotta sort of pull the band aid off and I've actually been kind of impressed at how the Chinese government is really, really, really thoughtful. They're like AI is going to do this. So we have to get ahead of that it's going to do this so we have to get ahead Out of that, I haven't seen almost any of that in any really structured intelligent way there is an AI Bill of Rights. But I don't see it happening in the US government. And that actually scares me most more than anything. Because, you know, we all know about phishing, scams and email. Can you even imagine? When you have phishing scams where you can call somebody in the voice of their family member? This stuff is possible today, and nobody sees it coming?

Fadl Al Tarzi: 15:25

Yeah, it's scary. You're right. It's it's incredible. I think there's no limit to what can happen essentially, honestly, Alex, I can't say that I have a very well sort of formulated opinion on how to regulate AI. It's something I have thought about. And obviously you read about a lot. It scares me personally, it scares me for my kids, because we want to have a future of society. When Elon Musk goes out and says, You got to regulate that, you know, you gotta sort of, you know, think about that. Having said all that, you know, a part of me thinks that, on the long term, educating folks on the risks of any technology, and trying to instill sort of social values will end up reducing the risks of abuse. So I think where the US runs, the biggest risk is, and almost I won't say undermining but undervaluing social values. So there's such a quest for generating profitability and maximizing profitability and maximizing that profitability as fast as possible. That comes, you know, the flip side of that is abuse of technology widely, like whether it's AI or something else can come in the future as well. So I think when you look at sort of the underlying cause, and isn't isn't the sound, you know, philosophical, or, you know, I think the underlying cause is a quest for maximizing profitability at any and all expense, I think, if we address that, that will actually start addressing a number of risks inherently in society, including, you know, the abuse of technology. The other side of that is time, which is again, linked to sort of, you know, this civic responsibility or our role like as humans in on Earth, I think that dialogue can actually help significantly counter the effects of AI in terms of everyone's thinking about how can you maximize efficiency and productivity and cut time, but I think the real question is, what did we want to do with that time that we're saving? Is it gonna be, you know, again, like more commerce? Or do we now think that the things that in theory we wanted to do, but didn't have time for, which are impactful things and meaningful things we should be doing? So thinking about it from a philosophical perspective, I think society is always going to be a much better regulator than government. If the common belief is, you know, this is where we should be spending our time. These are the things we should be concerned about, I think that will self regulate more effectively than, you know, firm government sandwich, you know, the US will never be that sort of society.

Alexander Sarlin: 17:46

What an interesting conversation, I love it. I just want to bring it back to what next for just doing for one more moment, because it is really, really inspiring. So you said 2000, graduates, you're continuing to bring in new cohorts. What is the global split? I've asked you this before? But where are you at now? Where are the students coming from for each of these successive cohorts and classes of next year university.

Fadl Al Tarzi: 18:07

We have enrollment today from I think, probably 100 countries. But definitely our largest focus is on Africa, predominantly. So I say West Africa, followed by East Africa and South Africa. And that's for a number of reasons. You know, predominantly, you have a very young population, you have high unemployment, and then you have local supply demand challenges in higher education, so much higher demand versus supply, unlike there is in the US. The reason unemployment is relevant to us, is because of our impact and sort of the mission. So ultimately, what we want next street to be known for on the long term, is the organization that has placed folks across the world into remote jobs. So regardless of your physical location, your race, your gender, your ethnicity, we want to connect you to the global grid and the global grid is a real is a reality today, like it was this idea we had five years ago today, it's a reality. So if we can render all these factors no longer relevant to your ability to access jobs, by giving you the skills to get on the global grid that can really change the world from an economic mobility perspective. You look on the flip side markets, like the US and the UK are going to face ageing populations over the coming 10 years. And therefore where the dollar is going to come from. It's going to come from Africa. So we're heavily focused on the continent.

Alexander Sarlin: 19:21

Fantastic. I'm really excited about that. We, you know, we talked to Opay from Kibo school, who's also focusing on on West Africa, and it's just a really, I'm very bullish on Middle East and Africa, as you know, the future of the world, the future of the workforce. Let's talk about the conference. When you go back to DC tomorrow or the next day, what do you think are going to be the lingering you know, nuggets that you will take with you to help guide or help you you know, think about the next year of strategy and expert what sticks out to you from this conference?

Fadl Al Tarzi: 19:53

I must confess Alex that I drank the Kool Aid so it's going to have to be aI there's no doubt that We need to be thinking about how to use AI in different ways and linked to the number of platforms organizations doing that effectively vendors essentially. So I think that's definitely one bucket. The other bucket is what I call a PLA. So I'm starting to see very clear paths to evaluating prior education, prior learning, regardless of where that learning came from. And that's something that we're really excited about. It's been part of our vision from the beginning. But I think today, the technology that exists and the willingness from organizations to cooperate on that front is super interesting. Essentially, what PLA, what we're talking about here is for a university like next for to recognize all forms of prior learning, whether it's a Google certificate from Coursera, or, you know, project management, professional, even work experience. So essentially, it's to sort of get out of this university Island, and become part of a much wider ecosystem that recognizes and grants credit against all forms of prior learning, and therefore, you know, bringing University back into sort of the relevant world and people's minds, right. So that's something we're really excited about, and we hope to launch later on this year.

Alexander Sarlin: 21:11

Super exciting. Just to be clear, the A and PLA is accreditation, as I read prior learning, accreditation assessment, prior learning assessment, that makes sense. So assessing prior learning in order to good grant college credit for it, they it's really, really exciting. Absolutely. We have seen you know, you mentioned course there are them, we have seen a little bit of the within the Coursera ecosystem. Some people are accepting Google certs as credit within the Coursera bachelor's, for example, at University of North Texas, there's very, very few examples so far. And that's shouldn't be true, especially when we move to this world where people are going to rescale where you have people who have been in the workforce for 20 years, and they have to go back to school to re skill. They have so much knowledge of so much competency. They should not have to start from scratch as if none of that ever happened. So I'm sure that's part of your thinking as well. If not, I'll thank you so much for being here with me. fuddle next Purdue University, I always enjoy talking to you.

Fadl Al Tarzi: 22:05

Thank you, Alex. Always a pleasure to see you.

Alexander Sarlin: 22:08

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