Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
The College Alternative: How OpenClassrooms is Rethinking Higher Ed with Pierre Dubuc
Pierre Dubuc is the co-founder and CEO of OpenClassrooms, the leading online education platform with about 300k students a month. The school offers unlimited access to hundreds of free courses, as well as complete 100% online training programs for some of today’s most sought-after careers. OpenClassrooms' courses and learning content are produced in-house, and follow a unique pedagogy which relies on scenario-based projects and mentoring from experts in their respective fields.
💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- How degree apprenticeships are replacing traditional internships.
- Why AI is reshaping both education and job training.
- What’s holding the U.S. back from scaling apprenticeships.
- How OpenClassrooms integrates education with real jobs.
- The future of career-focused learning and credentialing.
✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:02:18] Pierre Dubuc shares how OpenClassrooms evolved from an online coding hobby.
[00:04:22] The disconnect between higher ed and employment – and how to fix it.
[00:07:17] Why paid apprenticeships are more effective than internships.
[00:09:33] A real success story: From high school graduate to six-figure career.
[00:14:10] Breaking down the barriers to apprenticeship adoption in the U.S.
[00:21:36] How AI is accelerating job placement and training.
[00:29:41] AI-powered learning companions help students stay on track.
[00:34:37] OpenClassrooms is making job training count for college credit.
[00:37:18] Pierre’s vision for an integrated education-to-employment system.
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🎉 Presenting Sponsor:
This season of Edtech Insiders is once again brought to you by Tuck Advisors, the M&A firm for EdTech companies. Run by serial entrepreneurs with over 25 years of experience founding, investing in, and selling companies, Tuck believes you deserve M&A advisors who work as hard as you do.
[00:00:00] Pierre Dubuc: Apprenticeships are still new in the U. S. on new jobs like health care or teaching or technology. We see more and more, and we've seen that in Europe actually as apprenticeships scaled. We've seen some sort of a replacement of internships by apprenticeships. That is true. But in many companies, many organizations, it's a totally new thing.
So it's creating really a new space, if you will, that is Considered as kind of an early career talent pipeline.
[00:00:37] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry. From funding rounds, to impact, to AI developments across early childhood, K 12, higher ed, and work. You'll find it all
[00:00:51] Ben Kornell: here at EdTech Insiders. Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter, and also our event calendar.
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[00:01:17] Alex Sarlin: Today we're speaking to Pierre Dubuc, the co founder and CEO of OpenClassrooms, the leading online education platform with about 300, 000 students a month. Open Classrooms offers unlimited access to hundreds of free courses, as well as complete 100 percent online training programs for some of today's most sought after careers.
Open Classrooms courses and learning content are produced in house and follow a unique pedagogy which relies on scenario based projects and mentoring from experts in their respective fields. Pierre Dubuc, welcome to EdTech Insiders!
[00:01:55] Pierre Dubuc: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:56] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. I'm really excited to hear more about open classrooms.
I've followed your work for quite a while, but really getting to dive in and understand what you've done and where you're going with it. I'm going to find it very interesting. I think our listeners are as well. So let's just start with an overview. You know, what is open classrooms and how did you get into this particular area of education technology?
[00:02:18] Pierre Dubuc: Yeah, sure. So Open Classrooms is a startup company. We're a public benefit corporation, BCOP certified company. We're very mission driven and the mission of Open Classrooms is to make education accessible. Education leading to jobs. So that's the crossroad of higher education, workforce development, corporate learning.
Our end game for us is really to create socioeconomic mobilities for students. So getting a first job, getting a new job, getting promoted, the salary increase, that kind of stuff. So last year we placed about 52, 000 students in the workforce. So we train and play. So sometimes we place and train the other way around, but we do both.
We created this company. I'm one of the two founders and the CEO. We created it 12 years ago in Europe. I'm based now for four years in, in New York. And it's been a long journey for us because we created actually online courses for free like 20 years ago. And it was just a hobby. So it was online courses on coding, mostly programming languages when we were in middle school and then in high school and in college, we did that for over 10 years completely for free.
No business model whatsoever and at the end became the reference platform to teach coding in french speaking countries and from there we build open classrooms.
[00:03:43] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, 20 years. I did not know that. That's incredible. So we've seen many different, you know, waves of education technology come and go mooks.
Yep. All sorts of things. So in those 20 years, as you've gone from totally open classrooms, Totally free and open to open classrooms where you're placing tens of thousands of students. That's really amazing, by the way, into jobs. What do you see as the most impactful part of what open classrooms is doing?
And I'd especially love to hear how you sort of transfer that thinking from France and French speaking countries to the U. S. environment, which is pretty different.
[00:04:22] Pierre Dubuc: Yeah, it is very different. All those foundations are also quite similar. So think of the accelerated shift of skills and jobs with AI, first with, you know, technology and now with the AI.
I think of the talent shortage. For employers to hire in like healthcare and manufacturing and tech and teaching and that kind of stuff. And then finally, different issues when it comes to higher education in Europe versus the U S but both regions, I would say face their own challenges when it comes to like student debt and access to higher education, student allowments dropping and that kind of stuff.
So that's. the set of problems that we're trying to solve here. And the way we do it is through what we would call degree apprenticeship. So a degree that is an apprenticeship or an apprenticeship that leads to a degree at the same time. So this mix of higher education leading to high quality jobs. So an apprenticeship When you think about an apprenticeship in the US, typically people like confuse apprenticeship with internship and they don't really see the difference between the two.
Or maybe when they think of apprenticeship, they think of like becoming a carpenter or plumber or a truck driver. So more of a trade associated program. And. I would say what we're trying to build is Apprenticeship, which is a work and study program that is paid for, so training costs fully covered, it's debt free, you are making money while you are earning, you know, new experience and learning And getting college credits.
So that's what we're building and we're building now for high quality jobs, not only for trade jobs, but also for white collar jobs. So you want to become a data scientist and gain a master's degree. You can do a degree apprenticeship in data science and that's the master's level. So that's the type of programs that we want to.
Build and we build in Europe and we want to create in the very like specific U. S. environment.
[00:06:31] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. So unpack this idea of a degree apprenticeship even more, because I think you know, for people, apprenticeship is a complicated world and in the U. S. there's all sorts of red tape and bureaucracy around the apprenticeship.
Registries. It's and as you say, we, I think a lot of people, I'm guilty of this myself at various times, sort of think of what's really the difference between an apprenticeship and an internship. But the model that you're laying out here of a degree apprenticeship in which, you know, formal educational credentials like a degree and.
work experience, you know, that's meaningful and that can both be paid and lead to better paid jobs. We don't tend to see those things in the same category. Tell us more about how you're bringing them together and what's so, I mean, it's really revolutionary in terms of how we think about things in the U.
S.
[00:07:17] Pierre Dubuc: Yeah, absolutely. It's very new. So let me give you an example of a concrete apprentice who started with us two years ago. Her name is Tamiya. Tamiya was 18 years old when she started with us living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And she had a high school diploma, but no college learning, no college degrees, some walk experience, but you know, mostly like.
Basic service jobs and she wanted a better life. So she applied to open classrooms, open classrooms, apprenticeship in digital marketing, and she was interviewed by one of our employers called Merck, so Big Pharma, and she is amazing. So she was selected by Merck and hired as an apprentice in digital marketing.
for Merck for 12 months. So she had a 12 month work contract. She was being paid and she would work for four days a week and be trained for one day a week. So the one day a week is training on openclassroom. com. So it's a mix of online courses, one on one mentorship, projects to complete, and we'll talk about it maybe later in more details.
And for four days a week, it's called the on the job training, which is really like. Work based learning at Merck with her team and doing, you know, digital marketing campaigns and all that stuff. And we try and bridge the two, the on the job training and the classroom training. Normally this program is supposed to be completed in 12 months.
Tamiya is so bright that she actually completed in like nine months. And then at the end of that period, her manager was so happy at Merck that she was hired. As a permanent employee, now she's been with Merck for more than two years. She managed to get promoted. I think twice has a six digit salary and is on the fast track, you know, promotion program with them.
So that's the type of. Program concretely that we're offering. I would add that more recently this year, we managed to combine this with courage credits. So if you were doing that now, as an open classroom says a process, you would get 55 courage credits on the back of a 12 months long apprenticeship program, so nearly like two years of college in college grades.
[00:09:33] Alex Sarlin: That's quite incredible. And that is a story, you know, that Samia is 20 years old. She is already well into a really lucrative and hopefully satisfying and exciting career. And I think, you know, when people think about these sort of alternative pathways, and that's sort of, you know, a big phrase, but alternative pathways, sometimes I think it's either, you know, college or that you can You know, in the story you just gave, she may or may not be on a path where she wants to get a bachelor's degree or an associate's or sort of get formal credentials, but what you're doing with this concept of degree apprenticeships and the ability to give course credit during the job training or on the job training is actually people can do both at the same time.
And I'm sure that's incredibly exciting. You mentioned the sort of four days of on the job training to one day of training, you know, of video and projects and mentoring. Is that the ratio that you find most effective of sort of put together practical hands on and theoretical training?
[00:10:32] Pierre Dubuc: Yeah, typically we would see like three to four days on the job and one to two days classroom.
We really believe that the on the job training should be the majority. Typically between, you know, 2025 percent and then the classroom based learning is also really important. We provide one on one mentorship. The mentor is an industry practitioner, so tutoring the person every week and really bridging the gap between what you're gonna learn at school with open classrooms and also the type of projects you're gonna have to complete with your employer.
So the amazing thing is that The fact that we map this to college credits is quite innovative in the sense that not only the classroom time is recognized, but also the on the job training and that part is fairly unique and it exists out there. But I would say it's very rare that the on the job training is recognized as, you know, credit.
[00:11:30] Alex Sarlin: Let's talk about that because I think, you know, traditionally that has been the exact Rubicon that has been hard to cross for people trying to bridge education and career training is that you know Colleges and accreditors have a lot of control over what is considered, you know, credentialable What can be traded in for a credit hour at a university?
How have you addressed that? How have you gotten to a point where colleges are accepting? On the job training as college credit, because that's really new. And I think really exciting direction.
[00:12:00] Pierre Dubuc: Yeah. I think it comes fundamentally from the fact that our programs are designed like pedagogically in a way that is very rigorous.
So we design them from course needs based on employer needs in terms of jobs, qualifications, and skills. So we build. Backbone of skills that you need to master to get your degree or certification and to be qualified as, say, a data scientist. And then we design all of the professional projects that you're going to have to complete, how you're going to be assessed during defense sessions, courses, and so on.
So this academic rigor. Really enabled partner colleges and universities such as University of Maryland to be in a position to recognize harsh credits both on the classroom based learning, but also on the top training and that part is where I would say many universities also struggle to do that University of Maryland was comfortable walking together in order to provide credits on the work based learning.
[00:13:05] Alex Sarlin: I think it's a very forward thinking thing to do for universities right now and, you know, from what I have heard from university staff and from sort of people in the space is that sometimes universities want to, you know, or at least certain parties within universities really want to be more forward thinking.
Skills focused to be more career focused and to sort of do, you know, a credit prior learning credit career education, but they are restricted from the accreditors from doing so. And then others say that, no, it's the universities that they want to sort of maintain control of the credit hour. And, you know, I'm not looking to sort of pin blame on anybody here, but I would love to hear from you.
And I think my listeners would as well, our listeners, you know, how do you help people sort of see this vision? That it is possible to move to a next generation of career and educational synergy and not just sort of fall prey to the status quo. And, you know, Hey, in the past, it's been hard. We've tried this and we ran into a wall.
So I've just give up. Like, how do you get people to sort of push through the logistical hurdles and actually make a program like this happen?
[00:14:10] Pierre Dubuc: It's a good question. It's tough. I'll tell you that because in apprenticeship to make it work in the States, you need to be registered. So there's a lot of red tape and like bureaucracy around it.
You need to convince the apprentice. Maybe they've never heard of apprenticeship or they think of internship and you know, they don't know it exists. Same with employers. They don't know much about apprenticeship typically. So you need to help them understand the benefits of apprenticeship for their organization.
Then usually we try to. offset some of the costs to employers. So we walk with say workforce development boards or state agencies. So there is some sort of funding involved. So you have a lot of like different parts to align and that's the complexity of apprenticeship. But once you're there, when you get the attention of both employers and potential candidates, actually you manage to get the attention then from there.
It's almost too good to be true. So when we explain to potential candidates, they're going to get cash credits in an accelerated way. They'll gain work experience, like real life work experience for free. And they're getting paid
[00:15:26] Alex Sarlin: and they have a mentor
[00:15:27] Pierre Dubuc: and they have a mentor. And, you know, and you're like.
What is the catch? Because it's so far away from when you think of college degrees when you need to take 50 grand of debt and then maybe you'll get a degree in 4 years and maybe you'll get a job but who knows? Really, really attractive. So we receive like a lot of applications, too many applications compared to, you know, the number of roles that we have with employers at the moment.
So I would say the bottleneck reconvening more and more employers that it's variable for them and. I would say it's also a similar story for employers. Once you get their attention and you explain that actually through public funding, we can actually have them meet three candidates next week on the job they need and training costs are covered.
We can offset. Potentially like a part of their first year wages as well. It's all also very compelling for employers. And then you get the ball running.
[00:16:28] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. So, you know, Ryan Craig, who writes a lot about apprenticeship calls, talks about the role of these apprenticeship intermediaries as sort of The primary movers in this space, exactly like yourself.
And they move in exactly the way you said, sort of taking these different parties and bringing them together and helping them sort of understand the benefit of this across the economic benefit, as you say, you know, once it's in place, the benefit to a learner is, you know, the idea of getting two years of college credit and a mentor.
And paid and work experience all at the same time, especially compared to the alternatives. Right is astounding, but there's huge benefits for every party. And as this benefits for colleges, this benefits for employers. I agree. I think it's incredibly exciting. I think, you know, one thing that is really.
Tricky about this space is this is maybe a silly way to say it, but given that it is so positive, is there any way to sort of turn some of the existing systems towards this? So, you know, there are lots of companies that have pretty extensive internship programs, you know, and they put money behind them and they're very well established and they're already used to interviewing candidates.
Is that part of the strategy is taking a company's internship program and saying, we can do you one better. You know, we can find funding to pay them and we can give them college credit and they can have a mentor. Like, is that part of the future of how these apprenticeships spread?
[00:17:54] Pierre Dubuc: Yes. I would say apprenticeships are still new in the U S on new jobs, like healthcare or teaching or technology.
We see more and more, and we've seen that in Europe actually as. Apprenticeships scaled. We've seen some sort of a replacement of internships by apprenticeships.
[00:18:14] Alex Sarlin: Exactly. That
[00:18:15] Pierre Dubuc: is true.
[00:18:15] Alex Sarlin: Yeah.
[00:18:16] Pierre Dubuc: But in many companies, many organizations, it's a totally new thing. So it's creating already in a new space, if you will, that is considered as kind of an early career.
Talent pipeline. Sometimes it's also very useful to rescale or upscale existing employees. Apprenticeship is also really efficient to do that. So I would say there is some replacement, but mostly it's white space. You know, it's really building a new category.
[00:18:45] Alex Sarlin: That's interesting. I can't tell if that's a good or, I mean, white space is often a good thing, but the idea of having to build the knowledge from scratch seems like a lot.
I
[00:18:54] Pierre Dubuc: would say, yeah, it takes a while. You need to be there in the long run. It means there's a bigger opportunity, but it's going to take more time to build that space. And it's really time consuming to convince everybody and like advocate for it. It depends also on the states because some states are also helping in that direction.
So think of, you know, New York city where I am or California or Kentucky or Indiana. And so you have a bunch of states really committed to scaling up on ships with different strategies, but the most stakeholders, employers, industries. States talk about apprenticeship, then obviously the more it's going to be known.
We've seen also many, many colleges, notably community colleges, developing apprenticeship programs. So there's definitely something happening, I think, in the past few years, many more apprenticeships, and it's been very dynamic in certain industries and States.
[00:19:52] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, people talk about how apprenticeship is one of the only things that, you know, bridges political divides within the U.
S. You have politicians from both sides of both parties who are all very, very excited about the concept of apprenticeships and funding them within the state environment. That's really exciting. And I think the tailwind is there to really help push this forward. I want to get to AI because I know that you think a lot about it, and it's part of your strategy.
But just one quick question before we do, you're mentioning sort of community colleges as a really interesting front line for this type of apprenticeship, which makes a ton of sense to me. I think one of the things that makes it hard for people to get their head around the apprenticeships or the degree apprenticeship concept is that.
You know, often the stories that you, you mentioned this terrific story of, uh, Samia, you know, 18 years old getting a job at Merck with digital marketing, and she already is commanding an amazing salary. I think people sometimes think, okay, it can work, but it can work for certain hyper motivated. Students who go through a selective process like your application process and convince the company and convince the intermediary that they're really, you know, they have what it takes to do this pathway and sort of maintain it and stay with it.
And that can sort of feel at odds with community college, which has, you know, a 30 percent graduation rates. And you have students who have all sorts of other things competing for their time. So I'd love to just, and I know you think a lot about this. So I'd love to hear your talk about that sort of bridging that gap between.
Apprenticeships as a sort of perk for the absolutely most dedicated students of which they're, you know, they're sometimes few and far between and apprenticeships as a path for the big middle of students who are currently in community colleges at great numbers.
[00:21:36] Pierre Dubuc: It's a really good question. Obviously, we're very attentive to that question being, you know, mission driven, our mission being making education accessible, and this is exactly what you're you're talking about, right?
How do we make sure that it's for the masses and it's successful and not just for, you know, the one person that'll be admitted? I would argue that, first of all, it's still better to select candidates based on motivation rather than, you know, economics or where you were born and that kind of stuff. So, in a way, if you compare it to many higher education models, it's already some sort of an improvement.
But on top of that, I think it's not sufficient. You're right. I think we're very attentive to make sure that orientation rate is high enough so we don't let people on the side, you know, and say, no, you're not motivated on. You're not good enough. No, we want to make sure that we have something for you and we can coach you to get there.
So say you want to become a data analyst, but you don't necessarily have the prerequisites right now. All right. The degree or whatever, we're going to have a program to help you get there and coach you, mentor you, and so on and so forth. So to us, it's really about making education accessible in terms of academic prerequisites.
There's always a path forward with us in terms of location, in terms of time. You know, flexibility in age, in terms of disabilities as well. 7 percent of our students have disabilities and we can adapt to that, but also financially accessible to make sure that it, you know, cost less, that's free or very cheap.
And even you get paid while you, when you're, because you know, it's not just about paying attrition fees. It's also if you have like a family to take care of, then, then you actually need to make money at the same time for your rent to, for food and so on. So all of those things we, we take into account in our, in our model.
There's still a lot of improvements and a lot of new things to do to get where we want to go and make more and more apprenticeship opportunities available to the market. But in a country like, like France, where I came from originally, now you have 5 percent of all employees in the country, roughly 4 5%.
As a process, you have 20 percent of students in an apprenticeship program, you can graduate from, you know, a bachelors with MIT or the equivalent of MIT through an apprenticeship. So it's something that is considered prestigious, actually. So when you get there, same in Germany, in Switzerland, apprenticeship starts to be really well known, everybody understands the concept and everybody sees the value.
[00:24:28] Alex Sarlin: I think that's so exciting. And I really hope we can get closer to those types of numbers and sort of saturation and respect, frankly, for apprenticeships in the U S as it has been in France and Germany and Switzerland and a number of different European countries that have really thought hard about this and has spent a long time sort of building it up.
I definitely think it is possible. I think, you know, U. S. is a funny place. I feel in my experience, people have take a long time to sort of get their head around things that are new, but when they are, when they do, they sort of embrace them wholeheartedly. And I've been waiting for apprenticeships to sort of hit that tipping point for quite a while.
And I, I'm hoping we're getting there. You have mentioned artificial intelligence as one of the things that you use to accelerate your programs, to enhance the learning experiences, to enhance the career outcomes. I'd love to hear how you're using it in your context, because this is, you know, you mentioned 50, 000 students that you placed, you know, those are huge numbers and there's a huge amount of data behind them, there's a huge amount of interest from all different players.
How are you using AI to drive learning outcomes and career outcomes?
[00:25:31] Pierre Dubuc: Yep. In many different ways. In the learning aspect, we have built an AI based, what we call companion, which is chatbot, essentially a learning chatbot, so in between your mentorship sessions. With your mentor, a human based mentor, you can ask any questions to Banyan, the companion knows who you are, your project, the content, and so on, so it can really help you move faster in your program.
That's one example, works really well. We have built also AI. When it comes to matching career opportunities to students and vice versa. So we know a lot about you as a candidate or an apprentice. We know which skills you have, where you live, your degrees, your past experiences, work experiences. So we effectively, we also partner with job boards to collect all of the job opportunities relevant to your profile and then recommend those opportunities, build your CV.
And on top of that, we actually apply for you on your behalf with your consent to partner employers. So what we do is really try to accelerate and optimize the job search
[00:26:45] Alex Sarlin: process
[00:26:45] Pierre Dubuc: for you so we can generate interviews with employers so you can get in front of employers and then convince them of your value add for their organization, then get placed in an apprenticeship or full time job.
So that would be like two ways. We also use AI to generate content, to review it, to generate videos. Now to localize videos with subject matter experts. I mean, it's, it's evolving so quickly. It's really amazing what we can do already today in production.
[00:27:16] Alex Sarlin: It really is. And those all match very nicely with your your core mission.
You have a lot of content to create and maintain your localization is key when you're working across countries. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It's such an exciting time. You know, I think we've been talking now for two straight years, right about AI and all the potential it has. And it's it's starting to really, you know, be part of So many different areas within education, so many different areas within careers.
And, you know, one thing that I think we've all started to recognize more and more is that not only is it going to be useful, you know, for us as an educational technology creators. But increasingly it needs to become the content itself of the education because, you know, AI is changing job requirements.
The future of work will involve AI in a big way. Yeah. Somebody who you've 20 years of creating, you know, career relevant content. How are you embracing AI as a content category?
[00:28:11] Pierre Dubuc: Yeah, it's a really good question. So first of all, AI is needed in most jobs now. Not just as a category of jobs, because you can think of like AI engineering and a very advanced AI related jobs.
That is true. We built curriculum to become an AI engineer, data scientist, and so on. But I would say, you know, People building AI, it's a very limited number. However, people are using AI absolutely massive. So you want to really teach everybody now to use AI because I don't think, you know, AI, we completely replace every single job, a hundred percent.
However, a walker with AI skills. We'll definitely replace a Walker without AI skills for the same role. So we want to build that base AI skill sets for all of our students. So that means that we build. AI skills, one on one prompt engineering skills for every single student. So all of our students now need to learn AI, to practice AI, to use Companion as well, because it's also like teaching you how to use like chatGPTN or similar votes, and we implemented AI related tasks and projects in every single curriculum.
So now a hundred percent of our students. Learn AI as a foundation
[00:29:41] Alex Sarlin: and just a little pitch. You know, there's mentioned that they started with open courses. Open classroom still has a lot of free access course, including courses on all kinds of data analysis, web development and AI. So if something that you've been meaning to learn on your own or for your own career advancement or just to incorporate into your own entrepreneurship journey.
You should definitely check out Open Classroom's open content. It's really sophisticated and good content. So I know you're doing that already. We're coming a little bit towards the end of our time, but I just want to ask one more question, and it's a little bit of a curveball y question. You're somebody who's been working so hard for so long to sort of within these constricted systems to sort of break through, right?
You've built this talent marketplace, you've built this incredible content library, you're now incorporating AI, you have, you know, cracked the code on the ability to give college credits for work, for on the job training. That is a very rare thing to be able to do. If you sort of had that. A magic wand. If you truly had your druthers to step outside and say, you know what, all these systems, let's say they're starting over.
And from day one, you know, what were we some of the elements of the ideal learning environment that actually brings academic and formal education and career education together? If you could just sort of start over and not have to be constrained by so many of the existing systems.
[00:31:06] Pierre Dubuc: Good question. I'd say twofold.
One is about the entire integration of education with employment and workforce development. So, this is clearly where we're going to, at least with open classrooms. As you apply to open classrooms, we want to be in a position to in real time tell you, hey, Alex, you want to become data scientist. You're based in Denver, Colorado.
There are only 55 job opportunities in your area. That's not enough. Either you need to be mobile. And move or what we suggest is that you switch to cyber security. You have the economic prerequisites, but there are 500 job opportunities in your area right now. So give that information in real time, nudge people in the right direction.
Cause most people like starting a new degree program, say, and learning a new job. You know, they don't really know that much about it. It's very hard for them to access information and is usually very separated. You have, you know, your educational provider. And then the job market indeed dot com and and that kind of stuff.
So we want to integrate that more and more. I also think that with AI will be able to individualize more and more your learning experience. And even the curriculum, I'll be able to tell you, hey, Alex, you want to learn data science and AI. I know you've been passionate about education technology. I'm going to ask you to complete a project that involves, you know, AI in EdTech.
And this is the course, you know, that is really, you know, around the corner with, with AI. So I think true deep integration of education and employment and also personalization using AI. The last thing I would say is also access to. Financing and funding. It's a massive issue, obviously in the state. How do you make sure that it's financially accessible, but at the same time, you want to make sure that tax dollars go to very efficient programs.
And that is tough. So we as a country need to define. What quality means in terms of education, and that it's been, you know, a problem, an ongoing problem for many years. Now you can think of quality as in, do you get a degree? Is that sufficient? Do you get a job? A good job? Is that enough? It depends where you came from.
What is the value add of your profile and this educational organization versus you doing, you know, going straight to the workforce? What is the value add of the educational establishment? And I think this is how we should think about quality. Of educational programs and then really put tax dollars behind high quality, highly impactful programs.
But we need, we need to make sure we define what quality means and how will we. Track it and we don't have right now the systems to track quality in a consistent way so we can compare one state against the other one university against the other one school against the other. We don't have that system and data in place right now.
[00:34:37] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it's true. And people have resisted systems like that in the past, actually, when they've come up because so many great points in there. I love the idea of sort of value add as the core benefit of education. And that can be defined in various ways, but especially value add versus the alternative. You know, if this person were not to have gone to this school or done this apprenticeship or done this program, would they be missing?
What would be different? Is there a salary differential? Is there a confidence and happiness differential? Is there a differential in how much they are able to adapt to future changes in the workforce? I mean, there's so many different ways to measure it, but I think we have this outdated system. Frankly, I think it comes back to the accreditors, right?
Because when you mentioned we don't have these systems, we do have a system. It's just not very good. Because that is what the accreditors, the regional accreditors are supposed to be. They define quality and they monitor it over time. I know it's, it's, but it doesn't, it doesn't do what we need right now.
And what I do, I, you said that I really love, I'd love to hear you talk about it for one more minute as we close out, is that you're like, well, if I, you know, you use me as an example, I do an educational technology. If I wanted to go in AI or data science, could I do a project that combines those two things?
And that, that idea of a sort of transferable. Learning experience that can work with somebody in their current situation, whether they're in school or working, it's something that's relevant to what they're doing now, but creates a natural bridge to what they want to be doing next. That is a really exciting idea.
I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about that. Is that something you're hoping to incorporate into the Open Classrooms product?
[00:36:12] Pierre Dubuc: More and more for sure, in terms of, you know, support, learning support through Companion. In text format right now, potentially in video or audio format as well in the future, how can we adapt professional projects that we're going to ask you to complete to your own experience, context, world, how we can bridge more and more your employers organizations to you.
The curriculum and I think AI will be definitely a part of the answer there to provide that personalization at scale because then you can do that in a way that is either extremely more efficient and cost effective and sometimes in ways that you could not do before. Like say, I could generate a video.
Of myself saying to every single student, Hey, Alex, welcome to open classrooms. We're going to teach you, you know, AI in education. That video is possible. It's made possible through AI, and it was not before.
[00:37:18] Alex Sarlin: And there's the opportunity for this huge, even more of a win win. Now you're already degree apprenticeships, I think are a win for everybody.
You can go even deeper if somebody could be doing something that fulfills as, you know, fulfills college credit. and creates a meaningful project artifact for them and, you know, actually build something that's relevant to a company all at the same time. I think, you know, the limit to that in the past has just been there haven't been enough people and instructional designers and, and sort of workforce mentors to be able to come together and say, Oh, what could you do right now that would be useful to your employer, but also get you, you know, a credit towards this.
Particular program, but AI seems like it can really bridge that gap. So I'm really excited to hear that you're doing that. And yes, the personalized or differentiated video, I couldn't be more excited about. I think we were very close to this time. We know that OpenAI has announced that they're about to release Zorro.
We know that some of the other models are really working on it. I love Haygen, Colossian, Synthesia, and some of the other avatar programs, as well as, you know, some of the learning companions out there. So I think we're closer to this than, than. We have ever been and people like you and all of the work you've been doing it open classrooms over the years to really navigate this complex environment, you're going to be able to break through and find breakthrough even more than you already have.
50, 000 students is a huge number, but break through even more and sort of. Put the pieces together and show everybody how to get to the next phase. So I'm really excited for the future. Pierre Dubuc is the co founder and CEO of Open Classrooms, the leading online education platform with about 300, 000 students a month.
Check out Open Classrooms for their diplomas. Free content and just how they approach this really complex and very interesting space of apprenticeships and degree apprenticeships. Thanks so much for being here with us on EdTech Insiders. Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders. If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community.
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