HigherEd Series: What Would Higher Education Look Like If We Started Over? with Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich of Newstate University

Dr. Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich founded Newstate University in 2026, bringing 20+ years of education leadership from executive roles at SkillsWave, Pearson, LSU and SNHU. She holds a PhD from Kent State and authored "The Power Worker" and "How to Grow Enrollment in Online Higher Education."

Hosted by Matthew Rascoff
This episode is part of the Edtech Insiders HigherEd Podcast Series, featuring conversations with leaders shaping the future of higher education.

💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:

1. Why higher ed should be built from first principles.
2. How Newstate is rethinking the cost and structure of college.
3. The case for a one-course-at-a-time model.
4. How AI could reshape higher ed and credentials.
5. Why institutions need to narrow their focus and align incentives.

✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:02:23] Sasha’s journey to building Newstate University.
[00:06:41] Removing friction from higher education.
[00:11:10] The one-course-at-a-time model.
[00:12:29] Rethinking the economics of college.
[00:18:52] Why colleges should “pick a lane.”
[00:24:21] The future of credentials and skills-based hiring.
[00:37:18] Sasha’s advice for disrupting higher ed.
[00:41:49] How AI is changing information consumption.
[00:48:12] Rethinking student debt.

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Transcript

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[00:00:00] Alex Sarlin: Innovation in pre-K to grade learning is powered by exceptional people. For over 15 years, Edtech companies of all sizes and stages have trusted Higher Education to find the talent that drives impact. When specific skills and experiences are mission-critical, Higher Education is a partner that delivers.

Offering permanent, fractional, and executive recruitment, Higher Education knows the go-to-market talent you need. Learn more at hireedu.com. That's H-I-R-E-E-D-U.com. 

[00:00:33] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: I think one of the many reasons that college costs have gotten out of control is really mission creep and scope creep. Like every institution does not have to be good at everything.

In fact, every institution should not be in every space. Like there are schools that are extraordinarily good at nursing. We don't expect every college to have a law school, right? Why do we expect them all to have a psychology department or an engineering department? You can't be all things to all people.

Pick a lane and get really good at your lane.

[00:01:06] 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 here at Edtech Insiders. 

[00:01:22] Ben Kornell: Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter, and also our event calendar.

And to go deeper, check out Edtech Insiders Plus, where you can get premium content, access to our WhatsApp channel, early access to events, and backchannel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoy today's pod.

[00:01:46] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to the Edtech Insiders Higher Education Series hosted by Matthew Rascoff. Matthew is an education innovation leader, a Stanford lecturer, and a regular guest on our podcast whose work focuses on expanding access to knowledge and opportunity through digital learning. In this series, he speaks with leaders shaping the future of higher education.

We hope you enjoy the conversations. 

[00:02:10] Matthew Rascoff: We have a special guest today to kick off our series, which is Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich. Sasha, thank you so much for being with us on this 

[00:02:20] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: podcast. Anytime you call, I always answer. 

[00:02:23] Matthew Rascoff: Well, I'm very honored to have you, and I could not imagine a better kickoff guest to have on the podcast because I think your career exemplifies the themes that we're trying to explore here, which is really about where innovation comes from and how to make the most impact.

Does it originate from inside institutions that can be reimagined, or do you really need to move outside in this disruptive way and challenge the existing order through creative destruction? And I think you've tried so many different angles- ... of attack on the challenges- Yes ... facing higher education.

Maybe you can just get us started by telling us your story. I know you were a teacher in the K-12 system very early on. Yes. Mm-hmm. You've also worked in the community college sector and are known for having launched the first community college MOOC, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. And then you've spent time in public flagships and are now doing New State University.

So just walk us through your past and tell us your story. 

[00:03:23] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yes. Thank you for that. I did start my career in K-12. I will say before that I was actually a dancer, so for years I danced classical ballet and grand battement, and went to college and got a BFA in dance, which I cannot think of a less useful degree in the world.

Dance is inherently competency-based, so you can either do the thing or not. But I was not gonna move to New York or LA. I am very much a Cleveland girl. Always have been, always will be. And so I moved into K-12 teaching. My motivation was I wanted to save the world through the arts, so I taught in Cleveland Public Schools and then at a charter school for about five years.

Discovered relatively early on that children are great in small doses or ones and twos, but in entire classrooms, like, that was not my strength area. And so I was really looking for what made sense from a impact standpoint, right? And so I moved into instructional design, curriculum design, and then I was just right time, right place for Edtech.

This was at the time when those T3 grants were coming out. There was a lot of emphasis on teachers using technology, so I got involved in that. And then from there led to me being the first official instructional designer back in the day at Cuyahoga Community College. Was there for about six years, ended up running the online department.

From there, I went to Southern New Hampshire University. We did a massive technology implementation Went to Louisiana State University online. So yada, yada. I have been in many different types of environments, including Edtech, and I was at Pearson for a while, so in the OPM space as well. And I think all of that lets you look at a problem from a bunch of different sides, right?

At one point, I was actually in my PhD program consulting with a corporation on sustainable L&D to pay for the PhD program. So I was a student in online courses and then also administering an online program at Cuyahoga Community College. So was really able to look at everything from multiple sides And then when SkillsWave split off from D2L, John Baker, just really fantastic man, he made me president of that company, and that demystified for me starting something- Mm-hmm

from the ground up. And you get to a certain point and you're like, "Wow, if we could blank sheet this thing, if we could really just think about what is essential, not what we've done, and not even what we're trying to make it, but what do you actually need? If we could build that, that would be something special."

So that's hence New State University was born, and we've built that. 

[00:06:05] Matthew Rascoff: I like that idea that there's a kind of distillation process, almost a purification, where- Mm-hmm ... you can get back to first principles by exploring- Yes ... these different angles of a problem, and then you can see like, well, what is really the heart?

And let's extract- 100% ... that thing and expand on that. So what would you say at New State University, what are those first principles? What did you extract from all those different lessons, like the K-12 teaching, where it was more about the individual attention that you could give students, but the struggle with the groups?

What are the key ideas that you took away from your trajectory that you were trying to put into the DNA of New State? 

[00:06:41] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yes. So I'd say front and center is removal of pain, and that seems a little strange. I mean, you hear about this more I think in software development stuff like that, is like how are we removing friction so that people can actually focus on learning?

So think of all the things that institutions do that they invest in that have absolutely nothing to do with the learning process, right? So our goal was to make learning affordable and accessible to everyone at scale, and this is important, with aligned economic incentives. And I'll talk about that in a minute.

But when we looked at what was absolutely essential, you have to get to the learning, right? Everything else is noise. You have to get to the learning. So how can we remove as much as possible to get to the learning? And I think even three years ago, what we're doing wouldn't have been possible without the technology that's now out there, right?

Like, you could do it, but it would take so much more time, and it would be so much more expensive. Mm-hmm. And so we're in this really unique space where getting to the core is aligned with the fact that you can actually just do that. Like, you can just do something and stand it up. 

[00:07:47] Matthew Rascoff: What are the main sources of pain that you thought needed to be removed?

[00:07:52] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Oh my gosh. So the first is admissions Like admissions is a horrible process at most institutions Mm-hmm. Even the ones that try to streamline it, I mean, it's just like multiple, multiple steps. A lot of this unfortunately has to do with federal financial aid and Title IV requirements. That is what it is, right?

But just all of the multiple, multiple steps and then seeing where someone is in terms of admissibility and that there's just barriers that don't need to be there. They're asking you questions that don't need to be asked. They're filling out forms. Even if it takes 48 hours to assess- Mm-hmm ... something for prior learning assessment, like it's another delay.

It's another moment where someone can say, "Is this right for me?" Yeah. Like, is college... What level of confidence do I have that I'm gonna be able to get through all this yuck? Mm-hmm. So I'd say admissions processes, absolutely number one. Number two, course scheduling, hands down. What course am I gonna take?

When am I gonna take it? Do I have to wait for it? How long is it gonna be? Who's gonna be teaching it? All of the unknowns. Talk about overwhelming cognitive load, especially for, like my personal mission is for students for whom traditional education either was never an option or is just not gonna work for their lives.

[00:09:08] Matthew Rascoff: Mm-hmm. 

[00:09:08] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Right? So that's my personal mission, and all of this stuff, and then also I'm a mom, so I'm going through this with my daughter. Mm-hmm. She just turned 16. She's going into her senior year of high school, and just the whole admissions process is completely overwhelming and so unnecessary. 

[00:09:28] Matthew Rascoff: Mm-hmm. 

[00:09:29] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: So those things together.

I would say all the yuck that goes on that has nothing to do with you learning effectively, efficiently, and deeply. Learning for transfer, that is more important now than ever. 

[00:09:42] Matthew Rascoff: And what about the good kind of pain? Do you buy into the idea that learning should be hard, and there's a productive struggle that needs to be retained?

100%. How do you distinguish between that kind of desirable difficulty and the friction, the yuck, the administrative stuff that needs to go away? 

[00:09:59] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Well, I think having productive friction in the yuck process would be appropriate if you're trying to teach someone the college admissions process- Right ... or if you're trying to teach them scheduling, rescheduling classes.

Yeah. But that, we want the productive struggle to be around actually learning, and I think now more than ever you have to provide the tools in all different ways, like all different means of representation, all different means of engagement, right? So that someone can actually take it, chew on it, try it, implement it.

And it should be like the level of rigor that we have at New State University. It's a university. Like, our classes are not a joke. These are deep learning experiences that you can engage with very flexibly. So yeah, absolutely. The right level of... I mean, this is also, I think, my lens on leadership and my lens on organizational development is, like, the appropriate level of challenge, which is highly individualized, right?

[00:10:56] Matthew Rascoff: Mm-hmm. And if I understand correctly, the model is you take one course at a time- Yes ... and that unlocks the next course. Mm-hmm. Walk us through the learning science behind that and how that fits into your view of cognition and learning. 

[00:11:10] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Absolutely. So even within sort of the learning experience, we have made everything as consistent and predictable as possible so that, again, you spend the time on the material, learning the material, not learning your environment.

Right? So the course pattern is exactly the same every single time. Your courses unlock automatically once you've achieved competency on the, um, projects. And our competency-based education, like the model we're using, is actually quite a bit different than some other models that are out there because of this.

There's no such thing as taking multiple courses at the same time. It's all about focus. I always use the example that most days even the idea of deciding what to cook for dinner can be too much. Uh-huh. Like, there's just too much. So we narrow the aperture to what to do next so that someone doesn't have to make choices.

They know what's coming. It's the same thing with our curriculum. It's lockstep. You pick a path, and you keep going down that path, right? Now, there's a lot of flexibility with how you interact with the resources in the course and how much you wanna engage with other students, how much you engage with your faculty member, but it is designed for focus, one thing at a time.

[00:12:22] Matthew Rascoff: Can you talk us through the business side? My understanding, tell me if I'm wrong, is it's a $300 per month subscription. 

[00:12:29] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah. 

[00:12:29] Matthew Rascoff: No federal aid. 

[00:12:32] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Zero 

[00:12:32] Matthew Rascoff: federal. And it's designed for no loans, like no debt. 

[00:12:36] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Correct. 

[00:12:36] Matthew Rascoff: Can you just walk us through like the unit economics? 

[00:12:38] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Absolutely. 

[00:12:39] Matthew Rascoff: And you've also talked publicly about driving down the cost of course production significantly.

[00:12:44] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Ah, yes. 

[00:12:45] Matthew Rascoff: What's the business model? 

[00:12:46] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Right. Okay. So I'm gonna start with the things we don't do, okay? So there are a lot of things that universities and colleges are responsible for that are things of value, that are things that matter to society, that are just not things that would work in our model, right?

So we're gonna start with that as like acceptance. We are not doing nor will we ever do nursing. You need clinical sites. You need a whole- Right ... infrastructure behind interfacing with those, how clinical placements happen. It's very complex. It's not gonna work- Mm-hmm ... in our model, right? So with the baseline...

And also, I will say the vast majority of content areas could absolutely work in our model. 

[00:13:25] Matthew Rascoff: Mm-hmm. 

[00:13:25] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Right? So think of all of the things you don't have to pay for. We were talking before we began about stadiums, football fields. We don't have legacy overhead of, I wanna say, I'm doing air quotes, but "debt" of any kind.

And by debt, I don't just mean technical debt, though I also mean technical debt. Mm-hmm. I mean, we don't have process debt. We don't have policy debt. We don't have procedural debt. So we don't have to go through a multi-step, 12-month process to get new curriculum approved. That's not a thing with us. So the $300 a month is actually very sustainable, particularly at scale.

What we do is this is just a monthly subscription that someone can pause, stop, or start at any time. We do have professional development certificates that learners earn along the way, but the financial model is mainly aimed at extracting expense rather than adding revenue, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm. So we really focus on we don't even have a typical tech stack.

Like, we have what you would consider to be more it looks a lot more like an e-commerce tech stack. So what we're trying to do is align our goals and economic incentives even internally for growth as we grow. So we're using real, live, amazing human faculty, but in very specific designated times and places.

We ourselves are faculty. Everyone on our founding team teaches. Every one of us, we all teach. Every single one of our faculty gets stock options. Our economic incentives are aligned. 

[00:14:59] Matthew Rascoff: Mm-hmm. 

[00:15:00] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: So growth matters for all of us. Mission matters for all of us. And then if you think about, think about all the costs associated with scheduling classes, constantly hiring adjuncts, which most online institutions have to do.

Hiring adjuncts, training adjuncts, quality control on that. Imagine if all those people were part owners of the company. Mm-hmm. It's a very different economic structure. So if you extract all of those things, and then there's all the technology systems behind it. We don't have to have a scheduling. We don't have to have a scheduling system because every course is open at any given moment 

[00:15:34] Matthew Rascoff: What's the capital structure?

I think you said you wanted to avoid venture capital. Is it for those alignment reasons, like, so that the faculty are really the owners and drivers of the organization? Yes. And- 

[00:15:46] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: But we do need investors Uh-huh So to emphasize, we are looking for capital. I will say that I don't think we're as good of a fit for VC 'cause I don't necessarily think folks understand the opportunity afforded by commoditization in higher education for entrants.

Fundamentally different issue for people who are currently in the space. Commoditization means price compression. It can be very challenging. But even look at, like when we looked at the horizon of AI a couple of years ago, we saw opportunity there. 

[00:16:18] Matthew Rascoff: Right. 

[00:16:18] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Than see fear. 

[00:16:20] Matthew Rascoff: And so- If you switch sides. Like the barriers to entry- Yeah

have gone down, and therefore- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... as a new entrant, what looked very scary- 100% ... possibly at LSU is what draws you to this entrepreneurial opportunity here. 

[00:16:32] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: For sure. For sure. And also, like there are certain things that are just going on with technology, like agentic shopping is gonna fundamentally change...

I mean, it already has. Like the value of established brands has, like I'm air quoting again, but the brands matters less now than the questions that are being asked and the answers that are coming forth, which is opportunity for an institution that doesn't have an existing brand, right? Mm-hmm. We don't. We don't have an existing brand.

When I was at LSU, one of the things that LSU always had that was really, really strong was their brand out-punches their weight class, right? Like the LSU brand is just gold. It is. It has like a special place in people's hearts. We wanna be the Trader Joe's of higher education. We wanna be high quality. We wanna own the whole supply chain, so we can control quality beginning to end, control cost beginning to end.

Small inventory. We don't have 1,500 courses. We have 55 courses. Yeah. Each of which has three micro courses, right? So this is like so many people that I have talked to in higher ed have said, "This makes so much sense. This is so similar." Like everybody has their own flavor, right? "But if I could do this, I would do a lot of the things that you're doing.

And how are you paying for this? Who gave you millions of dollars to start this?" 

[00:17:56] Matthew Rascoff: Because- 

[00:17:56] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah, yeah. You're looking at her. We invested our own money. I mean- Uh-huh ... it's sort of funny, but it's also like this is gonna happen. Now, how long it takes and what it looks like will depend on if other people are willing to put their money where their heart is.

[00:18:12] Matthew Rascoff: Mm-hmm. 

[00:18:12] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Because it does take courage to quit your day job and not take a salary and believe in something that you're building. But one life, my friends. 

[00:18:22] Matthew Rascoff: I love it, and I think the Trader Joe's analogy definitely resonates. Like, smaller SKUs, more targeted, higher quality. 

[00:18:28] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yes. And 

[00:18:29] Matthew Rascoff: who doesn't love it? And 

[00:18:30] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: also people, 

[00:18:31] Matthew Rascoff: they're willing to give up on things.

Like, there's no e-commerce- Yes ... and there's no delivery. Yeah. There's no Instacart. You have to go there because they want you to experience it, and they're willing to make some trade-offs. And for you, sounds like that's nursing That's the- Yeah ... you know, the fields that are more regulated, that have clinical sites, like you're willing to give up on those so that you can do this more targeted thing very well.

[00:18:52] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: I think one of the many reasons that college costs have gotten out of control is really mission creep and scope creep. Like, every institution does not have to be good at everything. In fact, every institution should not be in every space. Like, there are schools that are extraordinarily good at nursing.

We don't expect every college to have a law school, right? Why do we expect them all to have a psychology department or an engineering department? You can't be all things to all people. Pick a lane and get really good at your lane. 

[00:19:21] Matthew Rascoff: I think that leads me to my next question, which is about accreditation, because I do think many of those factors are driven by accreditation requirements.

Like accreditors famously would ask institutions the square footage of their library. And you started building online universities that didn't have physical libraries that had to fill out a form in response to- 

[00:19:41] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: They don't even need online libraries, 

[00:19:44] Matthew Rascoff: right? ... to accreditors. Yeah. So can you walk us through not just accreditation, but like how do you think about legitimacy and quality control?

If brands go away, then how will agentic shopping for online degrees work? I know you wrote a book about enrollment growth. If there's a vision that's built in, are you gonna ask an AI to find me the appropriate course, and then your job is to convince the AIs to send the students to you? And if so, presumably, are they gonna look for accreditation as a signal of quality- 

[00:20:15] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah.

[00:20:15] Matthew Rascoff: Yeah ... in the absence of others? Like what is the future of quality control and accountability for, you know, you said the interests were aligned. How do you ensure alignment with the students and their outcomes? 

[00:20:27] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah, 100%. So it's interesting because I wanna go macro and then get a little bit more tactical.

So on a macro level, there's been so much going on at the federal level around what employment outcomes should your students have? How are you gonna prove that they have those employment outcomes? You can't have, you know, 50% of your students can't be, I don't know, English literature majors because we don't know what their ROI is at the end of the day.

I think there's a certain argument to be made for that when you're dealing with other people's money, which is what federal aid is. Federal aid is other people's money. When you're talking about your own money, you get to decide some of those outcomes for yourself, if and only if you have the information Right?

So the big thing is transparency, absolutely. We are on the more, like, tactical level. We're coming to a world where it's gonna be my agent talking to your agent to go get information and feed it back to me, which I wanna asterisk because that actually does represent, I think, a little bit of a danger zone, almost what's happened with social media and constantly getting fed what keeps your attention all the time.

So I just wanna bookmark that and then put it to the side, 'cause I cannot solve that, and smarter people than me need to figure that out. When it comes to finding the right students, I think people are more willing than ever before to look to outcomes and value. And when you talk about ROI, you're talking about ROI on multiple levels, which is employment outcomes probably first and foremost, but then cost.

If you get a slightly better job but then you're paying for decades on a student loan, is that ROI even really there, right? So vast majority of adult learners, and actually even the vast majority of traditionally aged learners, they go because they wanna be able to get a good job in the future, right? Or they wanna get a better job, or they wanna change fields.

The top three reasons that learners select institutions has not changed. I mean, it's adjusted a little bit and depends on how you ask the question, but it's flexibility, dollars, and program. Four tends to be institutional reputation, but that's really blended with programs. So someone has to have the program that you want, and then you wanna make sure that it's affordable and it's flexible for your life.

Two of the three of those we just sync up with immediately. Just two of the three, like done. The third one is we're not, again, trying to be all things to all people. We are in the applied AI space. Applied AI, customer experience, project management, product management, very intentionally fields that also have third party credentials.

We'll talk about that in a minute. That book that I wrote on marketing and recruitment Like the first 30% of that is so outdated now, like it's just done. And it was actually, the book was written like a year before it was published too, because publishing. So some of the recruitment stuff still, but even a lot of that you can explode.

Like the CRM we're moving to now just does, it does AI voice calls. I don't need an add-on for that. Just like when we wanted to put an AI learning coach in all of our courses, at first I was like, "Oh, who has the best AI learning coach? Let me go find the best AI learning coach." And then I was like, "You know what?

I'm gonna wait three months and I'm gonna see if the corporate LMS we're using just builds one natively." Almost three months later, they released the AI inline learning coach. Just technology's fundamentally different about how you can interact. So how a student comes to you is gonna be different. Like think about Trader Joe's.

They don't go out and advertise. People love Trader Joe's. They cannot wait until a Trader Joe's comes to their town. They wanna tell somebody about it. Mm-hmm. Like Aldi's is the same way. People tell each other, "Oh my gosh, did you know this thing is opening up?" Because of what? Because of value. It's just what they need, not anything they don't.

I don't even have to decide what kind of mayonnaise they want 'cause they only have one kind of mayonnaise. 

[00:24:21] Matthew Rascoff: And it sounds like you're still making a bet on credentials being a source of that value. So it's not like you're totally throwing out the system of credentials and replacing it with skills, direct instruction, and like the knowledge itself.

That is a more balanced view Then let's say the early MOOCs didn't have credentials associated with them, and they, they were really more about the content, you could say. Yeah. YouTube Learning doesn't offer credentials. So how did you arrive at that middle ground where you think credentials, and you mentioned industry certificates, then you mentioned the underlying credentials, like stackable credentials.

Like, walk us through that strategy, but not going so far as to say, "I wanna be regionally accredited," which would produce the credentials that might have the most credentialism behind them, let's say. 

[00:25:09] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: So technically, there's no such thing as regional accredita- accreditation. Giant asterisk 'cause everybody still uses the term, even our current administration is trying to ban colleges from using it, which that's gonna get really interesting.

[00:25:24] Matthew Rascoff: Traditional accreditors, legacy accreditors. 

[00:25:27] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yes. Yes. 

[00:25:27] Matthew Rascoff: No, I love that. You're focused on newer startup accreditors, right? Yeah, yeah. So you're going after- 

[00:25:32] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Well, so here's the thing. When you are applying for accreditation, you cannot always publicly talk about which accreditation agency that you might be interested in.

So I'm gonna talk broadly about why I believe in accreditation and why I think it's important. We actually, at New State University, already have international accreditation because there was an expedited pathway that way. And then the other thing is just as a human being with, I hope, some sort of moral compass, credit transportability is really important to me, so we wanted to make sure...

CBE is not for everyone, so we wanted to make sure that if someone was to go elsewhere, they would be able to take their credits with them. So I wanna just huge shout out to our transfer credit partners who also believe that, so that if students want a pathway there or this is not for them, they're not losing anything, and that's a direct pathway.

That's not like a everything is gonna be an elective, right? Mm-hmm. So that is my main issue, that I actually think accreditation should be more meaningful from a transfer credit perspective. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know? Especially if you're using Title IV, so the government pays for your business course over here, you transfer to another institution to finish.

Oops, it's not the right flavor of business course, now it's your elective. You have to take the major course over. Government's paying for the same course twice. But from accreditation standpoint, I think there are like sort of multiple layers. One, my dear friends AI, like all of the engines that I have spent some time talking with, they all use US accreditation as a proxy for quality every single time.

They will put a flag and they will say, "Just make sure you know that this is not US accreditation," right? Even though you and I know that US accreditation does not guarantee transferability or transportability of credits, which is one of the primary reasons to have it. The other is to get into certain grad schools, which is fine.

So I will say that I believe in both incremental and they're not really terminal credentials, like smaller credentials, bigger credentials, pro all of that. We actually accept third-party industry credentials for credit. So if someone has a product school credential, we will accept that, translate it into credit.

So we're definitely at both and, but if you actually look at the data from hiring, as much as we like to push the needle on skills-based hiring, it actually hasn't moved that much. 

[00:27:54] Matthew Rascoff: Right. 

[00:27:54] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Right? So it's moved- Yeah ... less than 3% over the past, what is it? 5, 10 years. 

[00:27:58] Matthew Rascoff: Yeah. 

[00:27:59] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Like the data isn't great. 

[00:28:00] Matthew Rascoff: And the companies that said that you don't need a bachelor's degree to get hired have not actually hired that many more people, if any more people, without bachelor's degrees.

Right. And that was mostly virtue signaling it appears. What is the holdup there? Is that a technological holdup? Like if you can send an AI to go read the projects that the students have produced along the way- Yeah, yeah, 

[00:28:18] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: yeah ... 

[00:28:19] Matthew Rascoff: then you can actually get to something more, you know, about their skills- Yeah

and their fit for the job, right? So why do you need the proxy of a credential if you could just send an AI to go do that? The projects are public, I presume, right? 

[00:28:30] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: So here's the thing, though. People don't hire skills. People hire people. We are strange tribal creatures, and we like to see resumes that look like our resume.

We like to see people who interact the way we interact. And no person in HR ever wants to tie their own hands To have to hire somebody. Like, no hiring manager wants to have to hire somebody because of a score on an assessment. Like, that's why- Mm-hmm ... a lot of, like, even, you know, technology-driven fields when I ran Skills, like they were like programming tests, right?

You had to pass a certain threshold. Mm-hmm. But it wasn't like you pass a thir- certain threshold you get hired on your skills, right? So this is where there's a difference too between like durable skills, which I passionately believe in. To me they're power skills, they always will be, and what I would call intangibles.

People hire for intangibles a lot, right? Mm-hmm. Like, that is just humans. That's just humans and no amount of digital wallets is gonna solve that because humans love autonomy. They don't wanna give up their hiring autonomy to a digital wallet. 

[00:29:36] Matthew Rascoff: So does that mean, like, degrees are basically just an excuse for people to impose their biases on candidates and to say like, "Oh, you didn't have the right degree, so I don't have to hire you, and therefore I still have some agency as a hiring manager," and we haven't automated that decision-making yet?

[00:29:51] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah. I think it's interesting that you think we will automate it at some point. Like, I think you're more optimistic. 

[00:29:58] Matthew Rascoff: For some jobs, I don't know. I don't know. You don't think some level of hiring could be better done in an automated fashion? 

[00:30:06] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah. Let me ask you this question. Okay, so I would absolutely say if you were hiring someone, like for your personal team, whose performance you are going to be held accountable for, would you rather hire a known quantity or an unknown quantity?

[00:30:19] Matthew Rascoff: Like somebody from my own personal network, you mean? 

[00:30:22] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah, start there. We'll start there. 

[00:30:25] Matthew Rascoff: I mean, I think known by somebody who knows them- 

[00:30:28] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Right ... 

[00:30:28] Matthew Rascoff: counts for a certain amount and- 

[00:30:30] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah ... 

[00:30:31] Matthew Rascoff: probably counts for more than they, where they went to school. I think New State University, you know, bachelor's degree, it sounds like your goal is to establish some level of credibility, like that that means something in the applied AI space.

Absolutely. That that means something. 

[00:30:46] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah. But I will also say part of our... So we have s- like sort of four pillars in our learning experience. One of them is building a network. The importance of weak ties in hiring and career opportunities has been- Uh-huh ... well documented for decades, but most career centers, you know, you wait until you're close to graduation in most cases- 

[00:31:07] Matthew Rascoff: Right

[00:31:07] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: at the undergrad or at the grad level, and maybe you're lucky enough to have an internship experience, or maybe you're super innovative and you're in an internship degree program, all of which is great, but that's like considered an exit-based experience. Mm-hmm. That's too late to build your network. Mm-hmm.

Like, forget about it. What you need is people who will actually make introductions to you, to people who will make introductions to other people for you. Mm-hmm. Then you're building a professional network, you're buv- building weak ties. When someone can customize their resume, and like when you get 500 resumes in the same week because people can now customize their resume and get it out mass- Mm-hmm

who are you gonna pick? You're gonna go to who was just referred to you. I mean, it's just human. I don't think anybody means it. Like, I don't think people are sitting there like little evil geniuses being like, "Let's not hire based on skills." Right. People mean well, but a lot of people have skills Right?

[00:32:04] Matthew Rascoff: How do you do weak ties without an alumni base? Like, how do you help people grow their weak tie relationships? 

[00:32:12] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah, I think you personally hold out a hand. Your faculty personally hold out a hand. They make an introduction. You make an introduction. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's just like you've done it. I mean, like, I think you've personally done it for me.

Like, people have made... You're sort of in a network. You continually expand your network. Somebody says- Uh-huh ... "Hey, I'm looking to learn more about this." You introduce them to someone. We just don't design that, right? Like, we can design that into our learning experience. 

[00:32:36] Matthew Rascoff: And you force the students onto LinkedIn.

It looks like your discussion boards- ... are all on LinkedIn, right? Or are you still doing that? 

[00:32:42] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: No, we do. We force them. I guess, force them. To me, that's, you know, it might not be LinkedIn in two years. Uh-huh. I don't know. There's other places, too, you know? 

[00:32:50] Matthew Rascoff: But you're practicing that. You're rehearsing that process with them.

[00:32:53] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yes, absolutely. Okay. Absolutely, 'cause that's where you actually can make the intros. You know, we've, we've developed a Slack group as well just for, you know, more internal sort of engagement on that. But what I really wanna do is create a community of people who help each other around this education that we have, right?

[00:33:12] Matthew Rascoff: So back to my question at the beginning ab- about distilling the core. It sounds like what- Yeah ... I hear you saying it's, it's skills- Mm-hmm ... it's credentials that have value that are part of- Mm-hmm ... the interoperability- Yeah ... system of transfer. 

[00:33:24] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yep. 

[00:33:25] Matthew Rascoff: And then it's social capital. And it's those three things, that's what adds up to- what you're producing, what you're pulling out of the system, what you're pulling out of your own experience- 100%

to say, like, this is the thing that I wanna preserve and expand. Did I miss anything? 

[00:33:39] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: There's one thing, which is context, which we didn't talk about. So we have a podcast as well. It's called Real World Conversations. It's designed really to provide students with a little bit more of a 360 on what that career, either the next step in that career or that transition to career or that starting a career actually looks and feels like.

So it's talking to people who, who work in the field about sort of like, what are your war stories? What do you do on a day-to-day basis? What advice would you give to somebody else getting into the field? You know, like, that type of context around the knowledge and the job paths I think is really important for people to understand.

Mm-hmm. Because otherwise there can be a big delta between, like, what you think something is and what something actually is. 

[00:34:23] Matthew Rascoff: So maybe let's try that on you a little bit. Like, can you reflect back? Like, is there something that you wish you knew earlier that you now know that you've just- ... kind of like drawn out of this process?

You've been building this for two years. 

[00:34:37] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yes, yes. Absolutely. So I would've made one critical different technology platform choice at the beginning, which we're transitioning now, which is gonna be fine. 

[00:34:47] Matthew Rascoff: What's that? Name names. What do you wish you had? 

[00:34:51] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: So we're moving from, like sort of at the core of our system, because it's very experience-based, is a CRM.

So we started with this premise of like, you know, distillation is essentially there's like a recruitment function, an onboarding function, a retention function, and a data function behind all of it, right? And then that's outside of the learning experience, learning system. And I worked with HubSpot before.

Love HubSpot in a lot of ways. It's just not purpose-built for the individual journey that is truly low touch, right? So we don't have sales- Okay ... teams, we don't have admissions officers. I mean, we bent it to our will, but I would say painfully. So we're actually going with something that's much, much more so e-commerce based, even more so, and I'll let you know how it goes because I'm looking at the calendar.

That should be deployed in about two weeks. Don't laugh. We're building it with AI, it's all gonna be fine. 

[00:35:48] Matthew Rascoff: You said actually that you had a launch that you were working on. Is that the launch or is there something you want people to know about in a timely way that you're ready to talk about? 

[00:35:57] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: The biggest challenge that we've had is on the student acquisition side, is just being able to do paid digital advertising, right?

So we built the engine, we have the courses, we have all that good stuff, amazing faculty doing the things faculty like doing, not, you know, repetitive- stuff, and we're doing our first paid digital, right? But because we're a lean, mean, fighting machine, we have to make sure that all of that points in deploying the CRM are, like, fully buttoned, right?

Like, fully buttoned up. Mm-hmm. And we have a somewhat of a unique customer acquisition strategy that I don't wanna get into here, but that I'm sure will become clear over time. You know, we're excited about that. We do have to get that technology locked and loaded, and it's seems kind of crazy that you would do it this fast, but it's totally possible.

You just have to think through it differently. Go back to first principles. 

[00:36:50] Matthew Rascoff: Okay. So beside technology, anything else that you've changed your mind about or that you wish you knew, maybe about the model, about learning? You mentioned building a management team, something about that. Like, what- Yeah ... do you wish you knew?

And also, what advice might you give other entrepreneurs who wanna follow in your footsteps? 

[00:37:08] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Oh, wow. I'm not sure anyone would wanna actually follow in my footsteps yet. I would say- 

[00:37:14] Matthew Rascoff: Many are following in your footsteps at this very moment. I can 

[00:37:18] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: count dozens of institutions. I don't think they're following in mine.

They may be walking on a path. I actually... If I was giving advice to a different institution, right, that was trying to disrupt themselves, I would say isolate. I would say isolate, isolate, isolate real resources and align economic incentives. Colleges and universities are terrible at aligning economic incentives, and so they spend so much time and resources with internal battles.

When you get to the point where you need a meeting before the meeting, like, you're cooked, you're done. You're just- Mm-hmm ... wasting resources and imagination. So I would say isolate for sure. If I had to give someone else advice, the biggest thing I would say is think differently about how you work. Like, that is baseline.

Don't think about what you're building yet, think about how you're working. So, like, have your vision, but then, like, the actual mechanics and tactics of how you're gonna execute on it. That is something that I actually think we started with in mind, but because the technology moves so fast, you have to learn so fast.

So I think at the beginning, we weren't as willing as we needed to be to let go of certain things to adopt other things, and we've become very intentional about that. Like, nothing is precious. Nothing is precious. 

[00:38:32] Matthew Rascoff: Mm-hmm. 

[00:38:32] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: As one of our faculty members, a great, a dear friend of mine, Melanie Thompson, as she would say, "Best idea wins."

[00:38:38] Matthew Rascoff: Are there leaders in the sector who you've modeled your work on? Anybody you could point to as a role model for yourself, what you've taken? I mean, obviously you're going down this very independent path, but you've worked for, you know, some of the great institutions. Like, who do you see as- 

[00:38:56] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah, yeah ... 

[00:38:57] Matthew Rascoff: your own role models?

[00:38:57] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: I have a laundry list of people to whom I owe certainly my career, but I think a lot of just who I am as an executor, like as- Yeah ... as an ops person, because it all- Yeah ... comes down to execution. Like, can you execute? All strategy in the world, forget that. Can you execute? So I think- 

[00:39:16] Matthew Rascoff: Top three. 

[00:39:17] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: To- oh, that's not...

That's impossible. Okay, I'm gonna really, really quickly. Dr. Jillian McKnight-Tutain, always de- near and dear to my heart. Actually, before that even, Rita Bigham, who taught me how to talk. Could not, like, huge social anxiety. Dr. Christina Royal, amazing. Greg Fowler, absolutely. Paul LeBlanc. Probably one of the most impactful people in, in my world in recent years was Stacey Haynie, who was the provost at LSU.

Uh-huh. And she was so good at distilling priorities. Like, distilling priorities. I'd say Amelia from SNHU as well. Obviously John Baker. Like, just a ton of-- I would even-- Like, Case Bowles. I feel like I have had this amazing good fortune to work for really smart people who surrounded themselves with really smart people.

Like- Mm-hmm ... and not just smart people, like smart people who got it. Why are we even doing this? Why does it even matter? Well, you know, it's only the middle class and the future of our country and economic freedom, and ultimately, you know, Condoleezza Rice used to say education is a national security issue.

It is. We have to have a strong middle class. Okay. Officially stepping off of soapbox. 

[00:40:30] Matthew Rascoff: And where do you get your information? What do you read? What podcasts do you listen to? It sounds like you're a pretty, like, avid consumer of content and information. Yes. What's your best advice for what to join, subscribe to, et cetera?

[00:40:43] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Oh my gosh. I am on too many AI newsletters, so that I would say absolutely Google Alerts. I'd say there are some people who I just watch what they post on LinkedIn. Like, I'm constantly looking- Hmm ... at other people's feeds. You're one. No. Yeah. I would say a lot of people, like, in the nonprofit space as well, like JFF posts some amazing things.

Uh-huh. Obviously Str- some of these, even if you think it's going too slow, and even if you think it isn't necessarily exactly what you would be doing, you learn so much from it. Like, CBEN does, like, amazing things. Uh-huh. Quality Matters, WCET, all those snippets they put out. I like munch information, like I eat information all the time.

Also, my little Claude in Chrome, Gemini in Chrome, all of those things, you can just put a ton of tabs right into it and say, "Distill for me, like, two paragraphs on each of these things." Mm-hmm. And then you can have it read it to you. How you consume information is just so fundamentally different. You don't even have to...

It can come to you. 

[00:41:45] Matthew Rascoff: So you're sending AIs out to find information- Yeah ... and then summarize it for you? Mm-hmm. 

[00:41:49] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: You can also schedule all that stuff. Like, you can schedule tasks so that it feeds you, like, once a week or... We do a signal in the noise thing. You're looking for examples from completely different fields.

What are outliers? What are edge cases? What could come that we could really deploy on behalf of scale, on behalf of success- Right ... on behalf of driving costs down? 

[00:42:11] Matthew Rascoff: And so is that where the Trader Joe's idea, the e-commerce ideas, is that kind of the lateral thinking that you're trying to imbue in your team?

[00:42:19] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah. I think to some extent, like if you're looking at... It was interesting because we have our assumptions, and then you have to go and look at the data. So, like, Trader Joe's actually does have a much, much better margin than other grocery stores because of this stuff, right? 

[00:42:33] Matthew Rascoff: Mm-hmm. 

[00:42:34] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: But if you look at speeding cameras, for example.

This is gonna sound strange. 

[00:42:38] Matthew Rascoff: No, bring it. I love this approach. 

[00:42:41] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Okay. So annoyed at getting a ticket from a speeding camera on the highway, just so people know it wasn't, like, through a school zone. On the highway. I was like so close to writing a letter to the editor. Like, I get my Irish up sometimes, like a letter to the editor about like how this is predatory on citizens.

And I was like, "Well, I better look to the data first, make sure there's no good reason why they do this," 'cause I'm thinking they just do it to make money. And they probably do . Like, that was probably a high motivation. But it turns out the data is like super compelling that having these cameras and giving out tickets actually dramatically reduces serious car accidents and fatalities, not just on the highway where the actual camera is, but there is a halo effect in the surrounding area.

This is actually where a lot of online programs, they are missing an opportunity because they are hyper-targeting their programs where they could put more programs online because the same thing, it's a halo effect. You're paying to get your brand out there for the programs that you do have. You're forgetting that you're getting a halo effect for the programs that you don't have to pay to advertise.

Maybe they're niche programs. Who cares? It's plus one, right? And then you have to like, of course, square the circle of, but those tickets impact people more substantially who have less funds to begin with. Mm-hmm. But it's all information that you can deploy in different ways, right? 

[00:44:05] Matthew Rascoff: I love that example, and I am really passionate about road safety.

And I often use that analogy myself. I'm like a complete streets commissioner in Menlo Park. I'm involved in San Francisco schools. I had no idea. It connects to a lot of my educational philosophy, too. Not in the marketing way that you described, but about independence and autonomy and freedom for kids.

And I do that exact lateral move myself all the time, and I, I do think I like that heuristic also, and I think that's great advice. Like, look in other fields that might be quite distant, not the adjacent fields- Uh-huh ... but the distant fields, and try to bring those ideas back. Right. Those are unlikely to be plumbed by- Yeah

your competitors. They're unlikely to be looking at the traffic cameras and saying- Yeah ... "Well, what does this mean for online marketing?" 

[00:44:50] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Exactly. And that's one of the things that we do for Newstate, you too is... I mean, Elon Musk, love him, hate him, he's there. When he went to build SpaceX, right? Like, he wanted to build a rocket, and one of the things was he was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm sourcing..."

This is not Elon's words . Like, he didn't say, "Oh my gosh." I'm just saying that. But he, he had to source parts from all over the place. It was like a supply chain nightmare, and it just drove up the cost of the parts, and so he built the whole supply ch- he owned the whole supply chain, and it's transformed how we approach space Right?

There is no reason you couldn't do that in higher ed if you wanted to. 

[00:45:29] Matthew Rascoff: Okay. Last question for you. And you mentioned you're a mom and that you have a 16-year-old kid. 

[00:45:34] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yes. 

[00:45:34] Matthew Rascoff: So what advice are you giving your own child about their own higher education goals, and what would you tell my kids, you know, who are growing up surrounded by two parents who are educators?

[00:45:48] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah. 

[00:45:48] Matthew Rascoff: And you've gone through the traditional system, but now you've ended up as a disruptor. So, like, bring it home for us in a, maybe a more personal way if you're open to it. Yeah, yeah. Of course. Or maybe a more general way if you don't wanna talk that way. Like, is your daughter gonna go to New State? Is she gonna go to LSU?

Like, what is she thinking, and what advice would you give to a young person today who's thinking about AI and skills and the job market and employability and facing all the anxiety that accompanies those questions? 

[00:46:16] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Yeah. Yeah. So I actually, I have a son too. My son is 13, and I think the first thing I wanna mention is every person and every child is different.

My daughter actually is taking a course at New State right now because her school doesn't offer any education in AI, so she's taking one of our AI courses. And because I wanted her to have firsthand experience with it, she is actually building things in AI for us right now. So first, you don't have to wait until college.

So my daughter is, without getting too into it, she is gonna be going to college early. She has a very type A on steroids. Like, this girl is so focused. She's amazing. She does a ton of things. She's not my hero. I know, like, a lot of parents are like, "My kid is, my kid is not..." I am inspired by my daughter, though, right?

But she is much more likely-- She wants to go to law school, so she needs a much more traditional experience in the beginning, and she is geographically limited. So yeah, I'm lucky in northeast Ohio, we have a ton of really great institutions that she's gonna be able to sort of select where she wants to go.

My son, I don't know what he's gonna wanna do or how he's gonna approach it, but I think the things that our young people value now, like the fact that my daughter is just like, "Yeah, I don't care about living on campus. In fact, I don't know if I'm ready to live on campus." She's 16. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean?

But she's focused on learning. She-- I mean, we've been talking about well, what if you do go to Ohio State or OU and just take your first year online from home? Mm-hmm. 

[00:47:49] Matthew Rascoff: Mm-hmm. 

[00:47:49] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Or maybe you take your whole degree online. There's no reason why not, right? Mm-hmm. But I think people need to be working sooner.

That's personal bias, 'cause I worked all the way through high school. Mm-hmm. I want my kids to work. 

[00:48:00] Matthew Rascoff: Mm-hmm. 

[00:48:00] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: I'm not signing for loans for my kids. Like, I don't want them to carry loans I don't want them to have loans. Like, these are fundamentally life-changing amounts of debt that people have. 

[00:48:11] Matthew Rascoff: Mm-hmm. 

[00:48:12] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Like, people have delayed having kids.

They can't buy houses. I know people who are gonna be retiring with student loan debt. We can do better. Like, we can do better. 

[00:48:22] Matthew Rascoff: I think that's great advice. I mean, work in school, don't take on debt, and make an individual decision that's based- Mm-hmm ... on your own preferences, and also maybe your further professional goals, like recognizing that- Yeah

a law school's probably gonna look for a more traditional- Exactly ... bachelor's degree as the basis for their own admissions decisions, so. 100%. 

[00:48:41] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Every, Newstate is not gonna be the perfect fit for everybody, but my big hope with it is, one, I want it to be a roaring success. I want a lot of people to learn applied AI and related skills, and have fantastic outcomes.

I want better jobs to build good communities, strong communities. And then my second goal is I think we can help scooch the middle of the bell curve a little bit. 

[00:49:04] Matthew Rascoff: Mm-hmm. 

[00:49:04] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: The more innovation happens in higher education, the more innovation happens in higher education. 

[00:49:10] Matthew Rascoff: I love that, and I think that's a perfect place to close.

Thank you so much for being part of this podcast- Thank you ... and for inaugurating the series with us, and I'm very glad- My pleasure ... that we'll have future episodes that speak directly to some of the themes you raised. So this was really a perfect introduction to the series. Thank you. 

[00:49:29] Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich: Fantastic. Thank you.

[00:49:30] Alex Sarlin: 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. For those who want even more Edtech Insider, subscribe to the free Edtech Insiders newsletter on Substack.

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