#449： Faster and Cheaper Alternatives to College
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Summary
Every year, the cost of a four-year college degree goes up, forcing young people to take on massive amounts of student debt for an education that often doesn t even prepare them well for the jobs of today. Ryan Craig argues that there s a better, cheaper, and faster way to prepare for gainful employment.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Every year,
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the cost of a four-year college degree goes up, forcing young people to take on massive amounts
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of student debt for an education that often doesn't even prepare them well for the jobs of today.
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My guest today argues that there's a better, cheaper, and faster way to prepare for gainful
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employment. His name is Ryan Craig. He's the managing director of University Ventures, an investment
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firm reimagining the future of higher education, and the author of A New You, that's the letter
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you, short for university, faster, cheaper alternatives to college. We begin our conversation
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discussing the disconnect between a college education that job skills employers are looking
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for and why higher ed continues to get more and more expensive each year. Ryan then digs
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into alternative education models that include boot camps, income share programs, and apprenticeships
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that are not only faster and more affordable than college, but also put an emphasis on real
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life job skills. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash a new you.
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So you got a book out, A New You, and it's you, just the letter U, faster, cheaper alternatives
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to college. I love this book because we were just talking earlier. I've got two young kids.
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I'm saving money for college like you're supposed to, like you've been told you're supposed to
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do, but I'm always curious, like, man, is college even going to exist in 10 years?
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And in this book, you highlight some alternatives that are popping up that might even replace
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college. So before we get there, let's talk about this idea that, you know, I'm working
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on the assumption that if you want to succeed in life, get a good job, you got to go to college,
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right? That's what I did. My parents did. How did we get to this point where college was
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deemed like a necessary requirement to get a good job? Because that wasn't always the
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Right. No, that's exactly right. And I talk about that at length in the book. You know,
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up until the end of World War II, 1950, only about 5% of U.S. working adults actually had
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college degrees. So it was really, and if you go back and look at the history of college
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as an institution, colleges really began as a way in America, at least as a way for the
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merchant elite to sort of distinguish or differentiate their kids from the kids of the
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hoi polloi. So it really began as a, if you will, elitist exercise, which is not to, you
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know, diminish or demean the caliber of education that occurred. There's no question that a lot
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of cognitive skill building went into it. You know, most of our founding fathers had
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attended college and it showed. But the reality was that it was a rarity up until sort of the
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end of World War II. And then really from sort of 1950 to the sort of, you know, mid-80s,
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early 90s, it really became the sole pathway. It really became either you go to college or,
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you know, the alternative is sort of skid row. Of course, that wasn't true. There remained
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and remained today a whole host of professions that don't require for your college. But that
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was the perception. And so sort of a striving, upwardly mobile couple, you know, having children,
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they would, you know, add to the list of things that they want for their child. College became
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the thing. And saving for college became important too, but not until later, because not until the
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cost of college really began to rise out of control. That's really been over the last 30 years
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or so. Yeah, we'll get into that in a bit. But what I think is interesting, you talk about this
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in the book too, is that colleges never, like even in the starting in the 1950s, after the GIs came
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home, the GI Bill, and they started, they were able to go to college on that tuition, that scholarship.
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Colleges even said like, the purpose isn't to get you a job. The purpose is to create well-rounded
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citizens. So like, how did, why did employers start looking to a college degree as sort of a way to
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filter out employees? And it became like the de facto, like if you don't have a college degree,
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like need not apply. Well, that's exactly right. It has become a sort of sorting mechanism for
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employers. And, you know, it makes sense, right? If your most talented and motivated young people
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are being directed by their parents and the culture to this one institution, then of course,
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employers looking for the most talented and motivated young employees are going to look at
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those institutions and the credentials from those institutions as an important, if not the most
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important signal for determining where and who to hire. So, you know, yes, there was and continues
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to be value added by these institutions. But from where I sit, it looks to me a lot more like
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self-selection. Those families and students who are directed to and have the wherewithal and grit to
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complete the four-year 120 credit experience are going to be good employees for the most part.
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So that's sort of where college as a signal began to emerge.
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So it just shows that you're conscientious, you can show up on time, meet deadlines, etc.
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Well, yeah, that's the positive way to look at it. The negative way to look at it in the way that
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many people do is that it also means that you have the wealth and family support and family stability
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to not only, you know, get into college, but to be supported through college. And of course,
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that's not true for, you know, the majority of the country. Not everyone is well-to-do. So,
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you know, what once was in the 60s and 70s, really an engine of social mobility,
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in many ways has become a brake on social mobility due primarily to the cost.
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Right, right. And, you know, it's interesting, colleges also, you know, we're here to educate
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you. You're supposed to, you know, once you finish your four years of an education or five
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or six for a lot of people, like you're supposed to think better, right? But like you highlight a
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research that a lot of college graduates, like they're really no better than they were when they
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started. That's right. Yeah. There's a lot of research on that. There's a great piece of work
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from about six years ago called Academically Adrift, which shows that you sort of test folks
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coming in and coming out and you see, you know, for a substantial percentage of college students,
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really no significant improvement in terms of their cognitive skills. So that's an issue. But,
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you know, the single biggest change that we've seen over the last, you know, 20 years in higher,
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and of course this is driven by the cost, which I know we'll get into, is just this focus on
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employment, right? Colleges have always said that, you know, we prepare you to be a good citizen.
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We prepare you for your fifth job, not your first job. But we know now, and it's crystal clear from
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the research, that if you don't get a good first job out of college, you're probably not going to get
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a good fifth job. Underemployment is often acute in terms of salary differential and persistent,
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meaning that if you're underemployed in your first job, two thirds of the time, you're going to be
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underemployed five years later. Half the time, you'll be underemployed 10 years later. And of
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course, underemployment often means that you're in a job that never required a college degree
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to begin with. And so raises the question of, you know, why did you make that investment?
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I thought that was interesting because, you know, colleges know that employers use a degree as a
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way to filter potential employees. And so they know it's like a way to get a job, but like they
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don't want it. A lot of them don't want to take responsibility for that and say, no, we're not
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here to help you get a job. We're here to just, you know, make sure you become a better thinker,
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better citizen, et cetera. Well, and, you know, colleges were not designed with a interface to the
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labor market in mind. Think back to the origins of the institutions, why they were formed, how they
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sort of emerged out of the, you know, churches. That was not the, and in fact, the, you know,
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the first professions, of course, colleges trained for was to work as clergy. So, you know, the trying
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to figure out, you know, how to prepare people for entry-level digital marketing jobs was not their
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priority. But, you know, and, and, and that's, that's obvious when you take a look at how colleges
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are organized. There's one department within the institution that is peripheral, not sort of highly
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ranked in the organization. It's called career services. And you sort of look at any institution
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where that reports in, it reports to someone who reports to someone who reports to someone who
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reports to the provost who reports to the president. So it's not a priority. And the fact that it is a
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separate part of the university just sends the signal that it's the responsibility of that, of
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that one, one unit and not the responsibility of, of, of anyone else at the institution. That is
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largely the attitude across colleges and universities. We're not responsible for that. That's
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something that you do. And the reality was that when faculty and administrators were at school 20,
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30, 40 years ago, it wasn't nearly as big of a problem. And it wasn't nearly as big of a problem
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because a, they didn't have 40, $50,000 of student loans to pay back. And B didn't have the
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employability problems that we have now, which are a function of a, how quickly the economy is
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digitized. B the fact that colleges and universities are, are bad at aligning their curriculum with
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employer player needs. And C, and this is probably the most under-recognized element is that hiring has
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changed the way that students actually get their first jobs. That whole process has, has changed from
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even, even 10 years ago. All right. We'll walk through how that process has changed here in a
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bit. So, I mean, here's the question, like why everyone knows college has just gotten super
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expensive. Like it's way, way expensive. Like where's all that money going? Like if, if it's not like,
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if we're not creating better thinkers, if it's not helping people get better jobs once they graduate,
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like where's the money going? Yeah. Well, it's a great question. Uh, unfortunately we,
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colleges and universities measure themselves today, not on outputs or outcomes for students,
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which could include a sort of graduate income or employment, but rather on things that are
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actually easy to observe and measure. So think about it from the standpoint of a trustee of a
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college, you probably go to four meetings a year. Maybe you have, you know, uh, phone calls in between,
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but you're not sort of steeped in the, in the life of, uh, sort of how that, how that school operates
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off from on a day-to-day basis. That's not the job of a, of a board member or, or, uh, or a trustee.
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So you look at the things that are actually easy to, uh, to measure. What are those things? Well,
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you can look at your, your research dollars, the research funding that comes in. That's a easily
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quantifiable number. You can sort of look year to year at grants and so forth. You can look at
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rankings and that's a, an obvious and important one. And, you know, some presidents live or die
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based on whether they're improving or, or, or declining in the, uh, in the U S news, uh, rankings
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or, or any of the other 20 or so rankings that have followed U S news into the rankings racket.
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The third would be a real estate, which is just simply looking outside and seeing a great new
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building that is, has gone up. That's easy to observe. And trustees measure the, the, uh, the
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performance of their management teams, leadership of the university on that basis. And then the fourth,
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believe it or not is, uh, is, uh, is athletics, how your, how your teams are performing, particularly
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if you're from a big school, division one school with football, basketball. So I, I, I put those
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four together research rankings, real estate, and you'll have to pardon me raw R-A-H for, for,
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for sports as the four R's, uh, they're sort of the, the, the easy inputs to observe. And that's how
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most trustees hold their management teams accountable. But of course, you know, that,
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that, that, that has nothing to do with outcomes and student welfare, unfortunately. So we're,
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we're in a world where, you know, your typical, uh, and, and, and, and, and I've, I've made this
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point actually in my, in my prior, my prior book called college disrupted that in a, uh, a not-for-profit
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or public, uh, organization, often there's so many bottom lines that there's really effectively
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no bottom line. What are you, what are you holding the president and the provost and your
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leadership team of the university accountable to, uh, as a board member? And, uh, the answer is
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it's, it's, it's not simple. There are multiple, there are often so many bottom lines. There's no
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bottom line, uh, at all. And in many universities, it's really the, the leadership, the unit, the,
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the, uh, the president, particularly if they're, they've been serving for a long time that really
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sort of is driving the process and with sort of very little real, uh, board or, or trustee
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oversight. So governance is a big problem in higher education. Right. And you also highlight
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too that, you know, a lot of money, like you think we'd hire more teachers, right? But like
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we actually end up, a lot of universities end up hiring more support staff to support all these
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things that they're also investing in real estate, athletics, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
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We call them the Dean let's. And if you look at the number of administrators at any college
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today versus 30 years ago, it's just astounding. It's astounding. If you look at the increase in
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spending, the increase in spending as obviously reflective of the, of the tuition, which has
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really been sort of twice the rate of inflation for the past 30, 35 years, which obviously is
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driving the whole student loan and affordability problem. But if you, if, if, if, if you, if you,
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if you look at, uh, the growth of administrators, you, you, you don't see, uh, an increase in
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spending actually in the classroom for the, for, for the most part. Now there's some institutions
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where there are, there are, there are exceptions to that, but for the most part, the spending
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has all been ancillary to the core educational experience.
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Well, so let's talk about, uh, the student debt crisis, right? So young people, they bought
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into the idea because that's how it is. That's how it's been for, I mean, a good 40 years,
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50 years, 60 years. If you wanted a good job, you go to college. So they go to college
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back in the fifties and sixties. Like when my parents were in college seventies, like they
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were telling me about tuition costs. And I was like, geez, that was like the cost of
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books. Right. So it made sense. You can go to college cause you'd afford it. But now
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because of rising cost, you have to take out all this enormous amount of student debt, but
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you're told, okay, well, it's okay to take out that debt because you're going to be able
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to pay it back. Cause it's allow you to get a good job. So like, but that's not happening
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anymore. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Why not? So what's happened? What's changed the, besides
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increasing tuition costs, why, why isn't college paying off like it used to maybe even like
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, just first on the, on the affordability, you're absolutely right
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that, you know, in the seventies and even in the first half of the eighties, you could literally
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pay for your tuition, uh, by taking a part-time job during the year and, and, and, and plus
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the plus summer job, you pay the whole thing. You take on, on, on, on no debt. So we're in,
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we're in a different world. Now the average student is graduating with about $40,000 in student loan
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debt. You have horror stories, of course, of students with hundreds or hundreds of thousands
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of student loan debt. Typically that's including graduate school, uh, as well. Uh, but it's a huge,
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it's a huge problem. And for, for, you know, uh, up until now, colleges and universities have sort
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of justified that under the banner of, well, a college degree is a college degree. And this is
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what, you know, the elite schools, uh, charge the most selective schools, the Ivy league schools
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charge. And so we can charge some discount to that, right? We've got some sort of, uh, anchor price
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in the market that right now is about $60,000 a year, just tuition. And, uh, let me, let me remind
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folks that if you're going to school in a, in a big city and increasingly students are opting for
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sort of large urban schools, uh, the cost of room and board can be another 15, $20,000 a year.
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So add that to the, add that to the bill and you see how, how, how cost and debt can add up,
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uh, add up quickly. But the big, the big problem is now we, we, you know, affordability would still
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work if, you know, 90% of students came out and we're going into sort of, uh, entry level jobs,
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making 50, $60,000 a year at companies. That's not happening. And it's not happening, uh, because,
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uh, for, for, for, for, for the three reasons I mentioned before, one, uh, the economy is digitized,
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uh, which means virtually every, every, every good job, uh, that a college grad is going to want
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is going to require some sort of digital or software skills. Colleges aren't teaching those
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skills, right? You look at, so the most commonly used, uh, uh, SAS platform in the market is
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Salesforce. There may be 20 schools out of 4,000 in the country that actually provide any material
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training on the Salesforce platform. And it's obvious why, you know, faculty, you know, uh,
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individuals who go into, uh, academia and want to teach, they don't want to teach Salesforce.
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They view that as vocational training that's beneath them. Uh, but that's actually what employers
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are looking for. If you look at over the last 10 years in job descriptions for entry-level jobs,
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technical or digital skills now outnumber all other skills in those, in those job descriptions.
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And because it's so easy now to apply for, uh, an online job posting, virtually, you know, every job
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posting generates 300, 400, 500 resumes and no human hiring manager is capable of sorting through those
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resumes. So these employers use applicant tracking systems, which are keyword based filters. And if
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you don't have the requisite density of keywords, which are increasingly digital software oriented
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keywords, uh, you're not going to be visible to employers. So that's a, that's a huge problem.
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And increasingly these entry-level jobs do require managing some sort of business process through some
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software platform. Uh, that's what these jobs require and college students aren't getting them
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from a college. They're there. There's, you know, I have no quibble despite what I mentioned about
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academically adrift before with the, uh, the level of cognitive skill development that colleges do. I
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think it's as good as it was 30 years ago, 50 years ago, maybe better. But the problem is that the,
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the employer market, the hiring market, uh, has changed. How hiring works has changed and what
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employers are looking for has changed. And colleges have not come close to keeping up. I tell a story
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in the, in the book that I'm fond of that sort of describes the, the, the attitude of, uh, your
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typical college. There was an article last year in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which is a sort
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of, you know, the trade paper of college America's colleges and universities. And it was about how Texas
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A&M university somehow miraculously managed to develop a cybersecurity, uh, degree program in less
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than two years. And so there was, you know, celebration about that, but then there was this
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paragraph which said, but, you know, critics are asking whether or not the university is wasting
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its time by doing this because won't the skills that, you know, are, are in the curriculum in this
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program, won't it be obsolete in five years time? And, you know, that, that is an attitude that you
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just don't see in any other industry, right? Does Apple not develop an iPhone because it's going to be
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obsolete in five years, right? Does, you know, Boston Scientific not develop a new medical device
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because it's going to be obsolete in five years, but in higher education, that really is the prevailing
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view, uh, is that we don't, we don't want to, or need to align our curriculum to employer needs
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because employer needs are going to change. And what we're, what we're teaching is eternal.
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I think that's the, uh, that, that, that properly characterizes the attitude.
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All right. So students are going into debt to go to college. They're graduating. They don't
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have the skills they need to, that employers are looking for. So they end up, you know,
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they're not be unemployed, but as you said, they're, they're underemployed. They end up with a job
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that's paying far less. I mean, basically they didn't probably didn't need a college degree to
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even do that job. That's right. And, you know, we say underemployment is acute and persistent.
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So it's a real problem. So, so, so, so students are very focused now. Uh, the students, students get this,
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their parents are increasingly getting it is that it's really about the first job. And again,
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not discounting the importance of developing the critical, uh, thinking and cognitive skills and
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executive function, everything that's going to make you successful and a good citizen.
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All that is important, as I say in the book, but right now we have a situation where, uh, economically
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the millennial generation is really sort of, uh, bleeding out on the table and, uh, it really calls
00:22:07.500
for triage. And so, you know, we're, we're very focused on fixing the economic situation. Millennials
00:22:13.600
are, have fallen far short of prior generations on really every economic benchmark in terms of wealth,
00:22:20.440
income, home ownership, new business creation, you name it. They're behind generation X behind the
00:22:26.160
boomer generation. And, and, and, and now Gen Z has entered college. And are we going to have a
00:22:31.300
second generation go through this? And the impact is severe. I mean, you look at millennials, uh,
00:22:36.480
attitudes towards capitalism, for example, they, the millennials are skeptical as a group of our
00:22:43.040
market economy. A majority of them in a, in a poll from two years ago state that they think
00:22:48.340
socialism would be a good idea. And I can't blame them. Uh, it's a, it's a function of the economic
00:22:53.500
outcomes that they've, they've seen, which is a direct product of these two crises of affordability
00:22:58.640
and employability. Okay. We've done a good job. I think of painting the doom and gloom of the
00:23:04.400
situation, right? Let's talk about what can we do about it? And then you're highlighting,
00:23:09.400
as you said, cheaper, faster alternatives to college. You're actually giving people the skills
00:23:14.400
they need to get that good first job. So you talk about what you call last mile programs.
00:23:21.540
Yeah. As, as these alternatives, what, what makes a program, a last mile program?
00:23:27.140
Yeah. Yeah. Last mile training is a concept that really sort of upends, uh, sort of how we've
00:23:33.060
thought about education. Um, historically it's all been, you know, from left to right, right? You sort
00:23:38.560
of start with, you know, K-12 and then higher ed has been, uh, about, well, how do you take someone
00:23:44.460
with a high school education and make them more educated? And that's, that, that worked up until,
00:23:50.020
uh, you know, maybe 10, 15 years ago. And then it has broken down for all the reasons we've,
00:23:54.620
we've, we've described. Last mile training starts with the job, starts with the employers. It goes
00:24:00.320
right to left, if you will. The question is, what is the employer looking for, for these entry-level
00:24:05.900
jobs? And how do we deliver that as quickly and inexpensively for the student as possible with as
00:24:14.140
few frictions as possible, right? I mean, the, the, the, the, the, the, the labor market, if you look
00:24:19.840
at it, you could conceive of it as, as, and the reason, and meanwhile, there's nearly 7 million
00:24:25.120
unfilled jobs, uh, in this country, the majority of which are high skill, middle skill jobs. Employers
00:24:31.000
just simply aren't finding the talent for these jobs. So why, why is that? Well, we have these
00:24:36.500
frictions, right? On the, on the student side, you know, it's the, it's the cost of, the cost of,
00:24:42.780
uh, of upskilling the time required to, to get those skills and the uncertainty of an employment
00:24:46.980
outcome. So the, the, the concept of last mile training is deliver what employers are looking
00:24:53.300
for and hopefully reduce those, reduce those frictions as much as, uh, as much as possible.
00:24:58.420
And you can do that with a, uh, an approach, which is faster and cheaper. So if you look at what
00:25:03.540
employers are, are missing, they're missing primarily digital skills. There's a, an element
00:25:09.780
of soft skills. There's, there's an element of sort of, uh, familiarity with the, with the
00:25:14.180
industry, but it's primarily training on digital skills, on software, on software platforms,
00:25:20.340
on SAS platforms and encoding. But, but of course it's, it's, it's diverse across a range of,
00:25:26.120
a range of industries. So this is not just training for tech jobs. It's training for tech enabled jobs,
00:25:31.280
uh, across every industry. So the, the, the, the best example would be, you know, someone who,
00:25:36.660
who operates a, uh, a Salesforce platform, uh, for example, or even a sales, uh, entry-level
00:25:42.120
salesperson, right? A decade ago, you would have hired someone at a college for an entry-level
00:25:48.120
sales job and not expected, uh, really any, you know, direct sales experience, let alone
00:25:53.320
technology experience. Today, most of those jobs ask for two to three years of experience on a
00:25:58.480
Salesforce platform. So that's the, that's the problem. Last mile training addresses that gap
00:26:04.080
and reduces the frictions for the, for the candidate, reducing the cost, reducing the time
00:26:09.120
and increasing the likelihood of an, of a, of a good employment, uh, employment outcome.
00:26:15.080
The, the, the, the, the first last mile training programs that we saw originated about seven years
00:26:20.220
ago now, and they were these coding, coding bootcamps. And they were typically programs for college
00:26:26.280
graduates, uh, who were coming out into underemployment. There's, there's a company Galvanize
00:26:31.400
that we're, we're involved with, and these are, they're, they're primarily college grads,
00:26:36.080
uh, but, but, but increasingly we're seeing students without college coming into these
00:26:40.380
programs. What they're, what they're teaching you in three or six months is exactly what employers
00:26:45.320
are, are looking for. And it's not just coding. You see it now in business intelligence or data
00:26:51.300
analytics. We see it in digital marketing and we see it again in tech enabled jobs across a wide range
00:26:57.780
of, uh, of, of, of, of, of platforms. Those, those bootcamps, uh, were, would, they would charge
00:27:04.600
tuition, uh, but the outcomes that they would achieve for their students were great. You would
00:27:09.040
have something like 90% placement out of those, those programs into 60, $70,000 a year jobs, which
00:27:16.340
is of course the, you know, the, the, the, the college, uh, the outcome, the outcome, the colleges
00:27:20.840
are supposed to be achieving. Uh, so that was what I call version 1.0 of these last mile, uh,
00:27:26.700
training programs. And we've, uh, we've, we've, we've now, we've now progressed, uh, to version
00:27:32.000
2.0, uh, and 3.0, but both of which are sort of better, even better deals, uh, for, for,
00:27:38.400
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Yeah. And the way you describe bootcamps, they're super intense. They're, like you said,
00:30:27.980
just three to six months. And besides learning those really specific concrete skills, the
00:30:33.360
way I understand how they work, you would be on a team and you have a project you'd have
00:30:38.060
to complete within a certain amount of time that's basically simulated a type of project
00:30:43.200
you would do in like an on-the-job thing. So you had, you also learned those soft skills
00:30:50.880
That's exactly right. Yeah. It doesn't feel like school. You're not sort of going into
00:30:54.760
a class. Now, of course, they're, you know, they're, they are introducing concepts to you,
00:30:58.940
but that's probably maybe, you know, 10, 15, 30 minutes. And then you get to work. You get
00:31:04.320
to work and you're working in teams. You're working in, it's, it's a real work environment.
00:31:09.040
And often these are projects that actually come from the employers who are looking to hire
00:31:14.100
these grads in the first place, which makes it even, even cleaner. So yeah, it's, it's effective
00:31:20.220
at, and, and students, students, students, you know, are there from eight until, you know,
00:31:24.600
eight at night. I mean, it really is an intense, immersive experience. So, you know, you can,
00:31:30.640
you can imagine sort of what level of skill development you can achieve over a three or six
00:31:37.580
So you mentioned that was the first version 1.0. What, what is version 2.0, 3.0 of these
00:31:45.580
Yeah. Yeah. So version, version 2.0 are what I call income share programs. And if you think about
00:31:51.880
these education frictions that I mentioned before, it just reduces the friction even further by not
00:31:57.480
charging tuition up front. So coding bootcamps, the charge tuition, they would offer private loans and
00:32:03.620
so forth. You know, there's some students who simply can't afford the 10, $15,000 income share
00:32:08.840
removes that, that friction by the way the school effectively lends the money to the, to the student
00:32:16.780
and takes it back as a percentage of their income over a defined number, number of years. So the school
00:32:23.500
is really taking the risk, not the financial risk, not the, not the student. That sends a great signal
00:32:28.680
to the student that the school has skin in the game and is, is, is very, going to be very focused
00:32:34.080
on getting a good employment outcome for the, uh, for the student. And, and these income share
00:32:39.800
models, they, uh, they all have income floors. So if you, if you don't have a good employment outcome,
00:32:44.840
you're not going to pay anything back. Typically that's, you know, call it 30, $35,000 a year.
00:32:50.340
They, uh, they're limited in terms of the amount that shared. It's typically no more than 15%
00:32:56.900
and it's time capped and dollar capped as well. So typically no more than three, four years and
00:33:03.140
you're never going to pay back more than a certain amount. So if you will, it's sort of like a student
00:33:07.580
loan with, uh, insurance. If you get a bad outcome, you don't pay, uh, you don't pay back. And we see
00:33:12.900
those programs proliferating, uh, across the country. It's just a cleaner way to, uh, to do it just removes
00:33:19.560
the friction. And it means that pretty much anyone who's qualified can enroll in one of
00:33:23.900
these last mile programs. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. Cause with student loans, like you can take
00:33:28.620
out as much loans as you want conceivably, but like you can't default on, like if you don't get a good
00:33:35.280
job, you're stuck with it no matter what. Yeah. And you default. And the one thing we didn't talk
00:33:38.540
about is the impact of default. And there are millions of millennials who've defaulted on their
00:33:43.260
loans. And that's going to, that's, that's going to really limit your life prospects. I mean,
00:33:47.760
that's, that's something that will be on your credit forever. It's, it's, um, a stain that you
00:33:52.760
can't wash, wash away. So that's, that that's version two O and then version three O is, uh,
00:33:59.680
what we call employer pay models that simply eliminate the friction altogether because, uh,
00:34:05.300
not only is there no tuition, uh, because the employer, the end employer is paying, but they're
00:34:10.260
guaranteeing a job. And typically what happens is the program hires you from day one. You're being
00:34:16.060
paid to go to school. So this is really the best of both worlds. And these are the programs that we
00:34:20.200
see, uh, scaling, uh, fastest. They really fall into two categories. The first are what we call
00:34:26.400
staffing models. So these are actually, uh, intermediaries that are, that sort of act as
00:34:31.760
staffing or placement companies. Their business is getting you the job and solving a talent or skills
00:34:37.580
gap issue for their clients. So, uh, if you qualify, they invest in you, they invest in your
00:34:44.160
training. Uh, they pay you the cost of training. Some of them even put you up at an apartment for
00:34:49.340
the, uh, for the duration of the, of the training in return, you commit to work for that, uh, for
00:34:55.060
that company for probably no more than two years and to relocate to where the work is. A free location
00:35:00.380
is in fact required. And they're going to place you with one of their clients. You'll remain an
00:35:05.060
employer employee of them, uh, for that, uh, for that timeframe. And the beauty of these models
00:35:11.240
is that not only does it eliminate the education friction, but it actually eliminates the whole
00:35:17.020
other friction, which is why we have a big skills gap in this country, which is called hiring
00:35:20.460
friction, which is why employers are less likely today than they were 10, 15 years ago to take a
00:35:26.160
flyer on someone with no relevant experience for an entry-level job. There was a study a few weeks ago
00:35:32.160
that showed that 60% of so-called entry-level jobs actually had effectively work experience
00:35:38.660
requirements. So we see fewer of these entry-level jobs in America than we did 10, 15 years ago.
00:35:45.240
Employers need to be convinced to take a flyer on someone. And these models are great because they
00:35:49.740
eliminate hiring friction by allowing employers to essentially try before they buy. Employers aren't
00:35:54.920
hiring out of the gate. Uh, they're working with the intermediary, the last mile program, uh,
00:36:00.060
last mile program is absorbing all the risk away from the student and the employer and providing
00:36:05.600
what we call a frictionless pathway, uh, to a great first job. I mean, this also sounds like an
00:36:09.960
apprenticeship. Yeah. I say it's similar to an apprenticeship, similar to apprenticeship. The
00:36:13.900
other model, which is its cousin is what we call the sort of outsourced apprenticeship. Now
00:36:18.860
apprenticeships in America have had sort of a troubled history relative to some European countries
00:36:24.700
where apprenticeship is more, more established in this country. We've sort of had a hard time
00:36:29.500
really expanding apprenticeships outside of the traditional sort of building and industrial trades
00:36:34.260
where they remain, uh, prominent. There are about half a million Americans at any given time doing
00:36:39.160
apprenticeships, but they're almost all in those traditional blue collar building and industrial
00:36:43.120
trades. We see a huge potential for, uh, apprenticeships to, uh, explode across a wide range of new
00:36:51.240
economy, digital economy jobs, but it's not going to happen at the end, uh, employer. If you go to
00:36:57.500
Bank of America and you ask them, how many apprentices would you like to have in your apprenticeship
00:37:01.600
program? They're going to tell you we'll take five or 12. They don't want hundreds of, you know, uh,
00:37:09.000
18, 19 year olds running around their, their offices. And so, you know, we see the future, uh,
00:37:14.760
as these, what we call outsourced apprenticeships, which is when your service provider, your digital
00:37:20.960
marketing service provider, your cybersecurity service provider, your cloud service provider,
00:37:25.080
your software development service provider, your HR, you know, accounting, any service that you
00:37:30.100
outsource, we see the emergence of sort of an outsourced apprenticeship model where that service
00:37:35.660
provider can essentially amplify their value proposition by also offering talent. It'll be
00:37:40.940
those service providers, uh, who will operate these apprentice apprenticeships. And we're seeing
00:37:46.020
the emergence of those, uh, those as well. So what's the application process like for these things?
00:37:50.980
Because, you know, it sounds like the employer is taking a lot of risk by paying for this. So like,
00:37:57.000
I'm sure they want to make sure they get students that they know are going to finish the program and
00:38:02.880
eventually, you know, be, you know, be profitable for them. So how do they filter that out? I'm sure
00:38:08.800
it's pretty competitive. It's, it's more competitive now than Harvard. As you can imagine,
00:38:13.620
if you go out there and, you know, given student preferences today and what we call the employment
00:38:17.120
imperative, if you go out there with a plot, with a, with an offer, which is guaranteed job
00:38:22.000
at no cost to you, you get, you know, up to a hundred applicants for every, uh, every place.
00:38:27.480
So the key is, and what we're most focused on is helping to grow the number of seats in these
00:38:32.680
programs. And again, it's not the employer, the end employer who's taking the risk. It's the,
00:38:37.120
it's the intermediary who's taking the risk. It's the staffing company. It's the service provider
00:38:42.000
who's essentially investing in the student and hopefully we'll be getting paid back over time
00:38:47.960
as they eliminate the hiring friction for the end employer and make a premium for the, you know,
00:38:53.040
one or two year trial period. But yeah, it's, they're, they're, they're selective and they're
00:38:57.740
sorting primarily on cognitive skills, uh, right now. So often they're using tests and other measures
00:39:03.340
they're, they're not using degrees. I'll tell you that, but they're using, they're using tests and,
00:39:08.420
uh, sort of advanced, uh, interview techniques to try to assess sort of whether you have the,
00:39:14.500
the basic sort of cognitive framework so that in a three month period or six month period with a
00:39:19.300
last mile program, you'll get all the additional skills, uh, that you're, you're missing. But again,
00:39:23.500
unlike employers, they're not putting those digital skills or technical skills at the top of the, uh,
00:39:29.500
of the funnel because they know that they're, they're able to create, create those, to add those
00:39:34.160
in a relatively short period of time. So let's say you are a young person who's about to go to
00:39:38.760
college, or maybe you, you just graduated college. No, let's focus on if you're thinking about going
00:39:44.340
to college. Right. But you're thinking, man, it's going to be really expensive. Like how do you
00:39:48.140
make that decision? Should I go to college or should I pursue one of these alternative routes?
00:39:52.020
Do you have any like criteria that suggested criteria to help them make that decision?
00:39:56.060
Yeah. Yeah. I have a matrix in the book where, again, I think it's important to recognize that
00:40:01.140
not all colleges are, uh, are equal that in, you know, our 4,000 colleges and universities in this
00:40:07.180
country, there are only about 200 that are, uh, what I call selective, meaning they, uh, admit
00:40:12.500
fewer than 50% of applicants. And those colleges for the most part continue to have strong outcomes.
00:40:19.520
Uh, again, you could argue, uh, whether that's a result of value add or the caliber of inputs that
00:40:24.320
they're attracting, but those colleges are not the issue. The issue is the other 3,800 colleges and
00:40:29.940
universities. And so, you know, I have a matrix where on the X axis, I say, is this selective or
00:40:35.160
non-selective? And on the Y axis, I ask, is it affordable or not affordable? And if you're admitted
00:40:40.760
to a selective school with a financial aid package, it is affordable according to the definition that
00:40:46.020
I have in the book, then no one's going to be a bigger cheerleader than I am. You should go to that
00:40:50.000
school. There's so many benefits of getting a college degree from a selective school, you know, go
00:40:55.400
with, go with my blessing. On the other hand, if it's a non-selective school and it doesn't pass the
00:41:01.360
affordability threshold that you should see a bright red light. Uh, you, you, you, you are probably
00:41:07.200
making a bad decision to attend that institution and you should look hard at alternatives. And in
00:41:12.280
the book, we have a directory of 250 of these faster and cheaper alternatives, many of which
00:41:17.500
are local, some of which are sort of national across the country. And again, these aren't programs
00:41:22.900
that lead you into traditional blue collar jobs or not to, you know, train you to be an electrician
00:41:27.980
or a welder. Those jobs are good jobs and should be accorded respect and you make good money for it.
00:41:32.500
But that's not, that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about jobs that are leading you
00:41:36.760
into the pathways that lead you to the jobs that college grads want and aren't getting, um, because
00:41:41.860
they don't have the technical or digital skills to get them. Now the, the other, the other quadrants
00:41:46.820
are harder, right? If it's a selective school, but on affordable, you know, what do you, what do you
00:41:51.640
do? I actually suggest bending this affordability rule and being a lot more flexible and being willing to
00:41:57.620
take on more debt to attend a selective school. But again, there's, there's a price that it doesn't
00:42:02.760
make sense to pay even for a selective university. And you should look at a, uh, you should look at
00:42:07.560
alternatives in that, in that case. And then, you know, an affordable program at a non-selective
00:42:13.800
university, I'm sort of indifferent about that. If you're not going to too much debt,
00:42:18.120
I don't have a problem with it, but again, it has to be, has to be affordable.
00:42:21.680
Well, what about parents who are listening and, you know, they, they're doing like every good parent
00:42:26.960
they're told they should do. As soon as your kid's born, start a 529 college savings account,
00:42:32.680
start stocking a little bit in there because the, the interest that accrues in that account
00:42:37.620
is tax-free, right? But if you don't use that money for, you know, at an accredited university
00:42:44.640
and you pull it out, you get, I think dinged, like, I think it's like 10% is what it is.
00:42:48.820
Yeah. Yeah. So like, I'm, I'm doing that with my kids and I'm, as I'm doing that,
00:42:52.240
I'm always worried like, man, are they even going to go to college? And if they don't,
00:42:56.840
maybe they do this like a bootcamp or whatever, am I going to be like, am I going to take like
00:43:01.120
this penalty to get this money back out? Well, yeah. I mean, look, it's, it never hurts to save,
00:43:05.440
you know, you're probably not worse off saving and paying that penalty than you were of, you know,
00:43:10.320
not investing in that plan and paying taxes the other, the other way. So I, I'm not going to tell
00:43:15.900
everyone that it's a bad idea to save. I think you should, if you can save, you should save.
00:43:20.440
It will come in, it will come in, come in handy. But again, I think what's going to happen is that
00:43:25.300
we'll see a fracture here between those schools that are selective in producing good outcomes.
00:43:31.420
And people will be willing to spend money, good money on those schools and schools that aren't.
00:43:37.320
And frankly, it won't make, it won't make sense to spend that kind of money for the outcomes that
00:43:42.120
those schools are, are achieving. And so I think there, there probably will be 10 years from now,
00:43:47.080
parents who have sort of a full, full 529 plans that find that they probably don't have a reason
00:43:52.840
to spend it because their, their child wasn't admitted to a selective university and has opted
00:43:57.700
for a faster and cheaper alternative over a non-selective school. You know, again, it's really,
00:44:02.640
this is a cultural deal where it took, you know, a period of time to sort of shift to
00:44:09.000
college for all and at college as the only pathway to a successful career and upward mobility.
00:44:16.440
And, uh, I think we're, we're now on the, on the other side of that, where over the next decade,
00:44:21.940
we'll see that it'll be very clear that there will be hundreds of pathways, not just one.
00:44:27.720
And there will be pathways that are very job specific and industry specific and employer
00:44:32.880
specific. And it's going to be confusing. It's going to be harder. And lots of families are going to say,
00:44:36.920
well, you know, college is simpler and I'll just, you know, continue to go for the, the, uh,
00:44:40.900
the tried and true, uh, thing. And again, my message is, look, if it's selective school and
00:44:45.920
it's affordable, go with God, but be careful. And, uh, you know, the, the questioning affordability
00:44:51.980
becomes real when there are real alternatives, uh, out there that lead to good jobs that parents want
00:44:58.820
for their kids. And that's what we're seeing now.
00:45:01.280
I mean, it sounds what's going to happen in the next 10 to 15 years is that college is going to go
00:45:06.760
back to what it was like in the 19th century, right? Like, and for like, basically for rich
00:45:12.160
people to distinguish themselves. And like, there would be these other alternatives for everyone
00:45:16.460
else to get the edge, the skills or education they need to get a good job. So you'll have, I mean,
00:45:21.780
is that, is that a good guess? Maybe like you have fewer people going to college, but people are still
00:45:28.020
Yeah, I hope not. I mean, I hope that I, I, I talk in the book about how selective schools really
00:45:32.540
have a, an obligation to make sure that, uh, they're not just serving the rich, uh, but they're
00:45:38.180
serving, uh, those who will benefit most from the experience. And I, I raised the concept of what I
00:45:43.380
call distance traveled, which is to say that, you know, you shouldn't admit someone because they're
00:45:48.200
on third base because maybe they were born on third base. You should admit someone who actually
00:45:52.400
hit, hit, hit a triple to get the third base. And I know that, you know, most selective schools
00:45:57.740
think about that. I know that most of them know they could be doing more to do that, but really
00:46:02.780
it's, you know, your, your, uh, selective schools are, they, they, they should be in the business
00:46:07.260
of training the future leaders, uh, of society. And those future leaders need to look like society.
00:46:11.940
Uh, they can't just be, you know, for wealthy and privileged students. And unfortunately that's,
00:46:15.540
that's really in, from, in many ways characterizes the situation today. So they have a lot of work
00:46:20.100
to do to avoid that, what I would call dystopia that you just, uh, you just, you just,
00:46:24.940
you just mentioned, but I think, and again, my, my, my point is not that we should see
00:46:31.180
or want to see a reduction in the aggregate or per capita level of post-secondary education in
00:46:36.760
our country. That would be economic suicide. What I am arguing for is a radical restaging
00:46:41.600
of how that post-secondary education occurs, which is to say, you don't have to, uh, you know,
00:46:47.040
eat it all in one sitting. You know, you should be able to in three months, six months,
00:46:51.460
take a last mile program, get a good first job, which is going to be an entry entry-level job
00:46:57.560
in an industry where, you know, uh, there's, there's a clear sort of career pathway. Do that
00:47:04.080
job for two, three years, look around and figure out what else you need, because you are going to
00:47:09.500
need more. There's no question your cognitive skills, your leadership skills, your management
00:47:13.500
skills, you're going to need to do more. And I talk in the book about how it's really going to
00:47:18.620
be incumbent on colleges and universities to then provide those secondary and tertiary pathways
00:47:22.740
young people will need. So at the end of the day, whether you went to college, uh, and got it all
00:47:28.100
done at once, or whether you did a faster and cheaper pathway leading you to a first job. And
00:47:33.460
they did a secondary pathway. I think of it like a sort of unbundled master's, uh, program and you did
00:47:39.040
two or three of those. My, my hope is you'll be in the same place. Uh, but of course that, uh, that
00:47:44.980
second path, uh, where you get the good first job, you get your foot on the first rung of the
00:47:49.500
economic ladder without any debt, that is a sure bet than what we're seeing today where, you know,
00:47:57.500
almost half of students who enroll in college drop out, don't complete, have debt. And those who do
00:48:03.660
graduate, uh, half of them are, uh, underemployed, uh, at, uh, at, at graduation. So what we're doing
00:48:10.160
now is not working. Some segment of the population is going to benefit from the sort of restaging
00:48:16.700
that we're talking about. And, and, you know, some people in, in, in higher ed have, have talked for
00:48:21.700
years about sort of lifelong, lifelong learning. And really, I think what we're talking about is how
00:48:26.880
lifelong learning actually comes into existence and it comes into existence by not eating everything
00:48:32.980
in one sitting, but by doing a faster and cheaper pathway, do a good first job, a secondary
00:48:37.880
pathway, a tertiary pathway, and recognizing that your learning is never, never done. There's more
00:48:43.320
that you're going to need to do. Ryan, is there any places people can go to learn more about your
00:48:47.700
work that you're doing with these alternative schools? Sure. I mean, you can, I tweeted Ryan
00:48:51.800
Craig UV at Ryan Craig UV and, uh, my, my firm is called university, uh, ventures. You can find us
00:48:58.140
at universityventures.com. Fantastic. Well, Ryan, Greg, thanks so much for coming on. This has been fun.
00:49:02.820
Thanks, Brett. My yesterday was Ryan Craig. He's the author of the book, A New You,
00:49:06.440
Faster and Cheaper Alternatives to College. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores
00:49:10.280
everywhere. You can find out more information about his work by going to our show notes at
00:49:13.500
aom.is slash a new you, where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this
00:49:18.240
topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and
00:49:34.700
advice, make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com. We've got over
00:49:38.780
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00:49:54.160
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