The Art of Manliness - #449： Faster and Cheaper Alternatives to College

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00:01:24.980 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Every year,

00:01:31.300 the cost of a four-year college degree goes up, forcing young people to take on massive amounts

00:01:35.360 of student debt for an education that often doesn't even prepare them well for the jobs of today.

00:01:39.340 My guest today argues that there's a better, cheaper, and faster way to prepare for gainful

00:01:42.840 employment. His name is Ryan Craig. He's the managing director of University Ventures, an investment

00:01:47.320 firm reimagining the future of higher education, and the author of A New You, that's the letter

00:01:51.660 you, short for university, faster, cheaper alternatives to college. We begin our conversation

00:01:55.520 discussing the disconnect between a college education that job skills employers are looking

00:01:59.020 for and why higher ed continues to get more and more expensive each year. Ryan then digs

00:02:03.280 into alternative education models that include boot camps, income share programs, and apprenticeships

00:02:07.280 that are not only faster and more affordable than college, but also put an emphasis on real

00:02:10.780 life job skills. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash a new you.

00:02:16.140 That's A-N-E-W-U, the letter U, all one word.

00:02:21.660 Ryan Craig, welcome to the show.

00:02:33.020 Brett, great to be with you.

00:02:34.160 So you got a book out, A New You, and it's you, just the letter U, faster, cheaper alternatives

00:02:40.740 to college. I love this book because we were just talking earlier. I've got two young kids.

00:02:44.880 I'm saving money for college like you're supposed to, like you've been told you're supposed to

00:02:48.440 do, but I'm always curious, like, man, is college even going to exist in 10 years?

00:02:53.200 And in this book, you highlight some alternatives that are popping up that might even replace

00:02:58.480 college. So before we get there, let's talk about this idea that, you know, I'm working

00:03:04.080 on the assumption that if you want to succeed in life, get a good job, you got to go to college,

00:03:08.620 right? That's what I did. My parents did. How did we get to this point where college was

00:03:14.440 deemed like a necessary requirement to get a good job? Because that wasn't always the

00:03:19.040 case, right?

00:03:19.700 Right. No, that's exactly right. And I talk about that at length in the book. You know,

00:03:24.600 up until the end of World War II, 1950, only about 5% of U.S. working adults actually had

00:03:32.080 college degrees. So it was really, and if you go back and look at the history of college

00:03:37.220 as an institution, colleges really began as a way in America, at least as a way for the

00:03:43.620 merchant elite to sort of distinguish or differentiate their kids from the kids of the

00:03:48.860 hoi polloi. So it really began as a, if you will, elitist exercise, which is not to, you

00:03:56.240 know, diminish or demean the caliber of education that occurred. There's no question that a lot

00:04:02.400 of cognitive skill building went into it. You know, most of our founding fathers had

00:04:07.500 attended college and it showed. But the reality was that it was a rarity up until sort of the

00:04:14.080 end of World War II. And then really from sort of 1950 to the sort of, you know, mid-80s,

00:04:19.340 early 90s, it really became the sole pathway. It really became either you go to college or,

00:04:27.440 you know, the alternative is sort of skid row. Of course, that wasn't true. There remained

00:04:32.380 and remained today a whole host of professions that don't require for your college. But that

00:04:39.280 was the perception. And so sort of a striving, upwardly mobile couple, you know, having children,

00:04:46.220 they would, you know, add to the list of things that they want for their child. College became

00:04:51.060 the thing. And saving for college became important too, but not until later, because not until the

00:04:57.680 cost of college really began to rise out of control. That's really been over the last 30 years

00:05:02.360 or so. Yeah, we'll get into that in a bit. But what I think is interesting, you talk about this

00:05:05.680 in the book too, is that colleges never, like even in the starting in the 1950s, after the GIs came

00:05:12.580 home, the GI Bill, and they started, they were able to go to college on that tuition, that scholarship.

00:05:19.060 Colleges even said like, the purpose isn't to get you a job. The purpose is to create well-rounded

00:05:25.000 citizens. So like, how did, why did employers start looking to a college degree as sort of a way to

00:05:32.800 filter out employees? And it became like the de facto, like if you don't have a college degree,

00:05:36.880 like need not apply. Well, that's exactly right. It has become a sort of sorting mechanism for

00:05:42.240 employers. And, you know, it makes sense, right? If your most talented and motivated young people

00:05:48.080 are being directed by their parents and the culture to this one institution, then of course,

00:05:53.380 employers looking for the most talented and motivated young employees are going to look at

00:05:56.620 those institutions and the credentials from those institutions as an important, if not the most

00:06:01.460 important signal for determining where and who to hire. So, you know, yes, there was and continues

00:06:10.840 to be value added by these institutions. But from where I sit, it looks to me a lot more like

00:06:17.460 self-selection. Those families and students who are directed to and have the wherewithal and grit to

00:06:25.520 complete the four-year 120 credit experience are going to be good employees for the most part.

00:06:33.160 So that's sort of where college as a signal began to emerge.

00:06:37.820 So it just shows that you're conscientious, you can show up on time, meet deadlines, etc.

00:06:43.520 Well, yeah, that's the positive way to look at it. The negative way to look at it in the way that

00:06:48.300 many people do is that it also means that you have the wealth and family support and family stability

00:06:54.300 to not only, you know, get into college, but to be supported through college. And of course,

00:07:00.000 that's not true for, you know, the majority of the country. Not everyone is well-to-do. So,

00:07:05.680 you know, what once was in the 60s and 70s, really an engine of social mobility,

00:07:11.780 in many ways has become a brake on social mobility due primarily to the cost.

00:07:17.460 Right, right. And, you know, it's interesting, colleges also, you know, we're here to educate

00:07:21.440 you. You're supposed to, you know, once you finish your four years of an education or five

00:07:26.960 or six for a lot of people, like you're supposed to think better, right? But like you highlight a

00:07:32.380 research that a lot of college graduates, like they're really no better than they were when they

00:07:38.680 started. That's right. Yeah. There's a lot of research on that. There's a great piece of work

00:07:42.940 from about six years ago called Academically Adrift, which shows that you sort of test folks

00:07:47.820 coming in and coming out and you see, you know, for a substantial percentage of college students,

00:07:53.540 really no significant improvement in terms of their cognitive skills. So that's an issue. But,

00:08:00.560 you know, the single biggest change that we've seen over the last, you know, 20 years in higher,

00:08:07.020 and of course this is driven by the cost, which I know we'll get into, is just this focus on

00:08:13.960 employment, right? Colleges have always said that, you know, we prepare you to be a good citizen.

00:08:19.880 We prepare you for your fifth job, not your first job. But we know now, and it's crystal clear from

00:08:26.560 the research, that if you don't get a good first job out of college, you're probably not going to get

00:08:30.600 a good fifth job. Underemployment is often acute in terms of salary differential and persistent,

00:08:38.100 meaning that if you're underemployed in your first job, two thirds of the time, you're going to be

00:08:41.660 underemployed five years later. Half the time, you'll be underemployed 10 years later. And of

00:08:45.480 course, underemployment often means that you're in a job that never required a college degree

00:08:49.700 to begin with. And so raises the question of, you know, why did you make that investment?

00:08:54.780 I thought that was interesting because, you know, colleges know that employers use a degree as a

00:09:01.320 way to filter potential employees. And so they know it's like a way to get a job, but like they

00:09:06.160 don't want it. A lot of them don't want to take responsibility for that and say, no, we're not

00:09:09.940 here to help you get a job. We're here to just, you know, make sure you become a better thinker,

00:09:14.980 better citizen, et cetera. Well, and, you know, colleges were not designed with a interface to the

00:09:20.360 labor market in mind. Think back to the origins of the institutions, why they were formed, how they

00:09:26.820 sort of emerged out of the, you know, churches. That was not the, and in fact, the, you know,

00:09:31.640 the first professions, of course, colleges trained for was to work as clergy. So, you know, the trying

00:09:38.740 to figure out, you know, how to prepare people for entry-level digital marketing jobs was not their

00:09:43.800 priority. But, you know, and, and, and that's, that's obvious when you take a look at how colleges

00:09:49.020 are organized. There's one department within the institution that is peripheral, not sort of highly

00:09:55.680 ranked in the organization. It's called career services. And you sort of look at any institution

00:09:59.960 where that reports in, it reports to someone who reports to someone who reports to someone who

00:10:03.180 reports to the provost who reports to the president. So it's not a priority. And the fact that it is a

00:10:08.400 separate part of the university just sends the signal that it's the responsibility of that, of

00:10:14.120 that one, one unit and not the responsibility of, of, of anyone else at the institution. That is

00:10:19.160 largely the attitude across colleges and universities. We're not responsible for that. That's

00:10:24.380 something that you do. And the reality was that when faculty and administrators were at school 20,

00:10:29.080 30, 40 years ago, it wasn't nearly as big of a problem. And it wasn't nearly as big of a problem

00:10:34.840 because a, they didn't have 40, $50,000 of student loans to pay back. And B didn't have the

00:10:40.840 employability problems that we have now, which are a function of a, how quickly the economy is

00:10:46.960 digitized. B the fact that colleges and universities are, are bad at aligning their curriculum with

00:10:52.180 employer player needs. And C, and this is probably the most under-recognized element is that hiring has

00:10:57.840 changed the way that students actually get their first jobs. That whole process has, has changed from

00:11:03.240 even, even 10 years ago. All right. We'll walk through how that process has changed here in a

00:11:06.600 bit. So, I mean, here's the question, like why everyone knows college has just gotten super

00:11:11.100 expensive. Like it's way, way expensive. Like where's all that money going? Like if, if it's not like,

00:11:17.000 if we're not creating better thinkers, if it's not helping people get better jobs once they graduate,

00:11:23.520 like where's the money going? Yeah. Well, it's a great question. Uh, unfortunately we,

00:11:29.820 colleges and universities measure themselves today, not on outputs or outcomes for students,

00:11:35.100 which could include a sort of graduate income or employment, but rather on things that are

00:11:39.840 actually easy to observe and measure. So think about it from the standpoint of a trustee of a

00:11:45.420 college, you probably go to four meetings a year. Maybe you have, you know, uh, phone calls in between,

00:11:50.020 but you're not sort of steeped in the, in the life of, uh, sort of how that, how that school operates

00:11:55.540 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.

00:12:01.360 So you look at the things that are actually easy to, uh, to measure. What are those things? Well,

00:12:05.040 you can look at your, your research dollars, the research funding that comes in. That's a easily

00:12:10.340 quantifiable number. You can sort of look year to year at grants and so forth. You can look at

00:12:16.060 rankings and that's a, an obvious and important one. And, you know, some presidents live or die

00:12:22.140 based on whether they're improving or, or, or declining in the, uh, in the U S news, uh, rankings

00:12:28.520 or, or any of the other 20 or so rankings that have followed U S news into the rankings racket.

00:12:33.600 The third would be a real estate, which is just simply looking outside and seeing a great new

00:12:38.060 building that is, has gone up. That's easy to observe. And trustees measure the, the, uh, the

00:12:42.960 performance of their management teams, leadership of the university on that basis. And then the fourth,

00:12:47.720 believe it or not is, uh, is, uh, is athletics, how your, how your teams are performing, particularly

00:12:53.740 if you're from a big school, division one school with football, basketball. So I, I, I put those

00:12:59.000 four together research rankings, real estate, and you'll have to pardon me raw R-A-H for, for,

00:13:06.120 for sports as the four R's, uh, they're sort of the, the, the easy inputs to observe. And that's how

00:13:12.140 most trustees hold their management teams accountable. But of course, you know, that,

00:13:16.880 that, that, that has nothing to do with outcomes and student welfare, unfortunately. So we're,

00:13:23.360 we're in a world where, you know, your typical, uh, and, and, and, and, and I've, I've made this

00:13:29.680 point actually in my, in my prior, my prior book called college disrupted that in a, uh, a not-for-profit

00:13:36.020 or public, uh, organization, often there's so many bottom lines that there's really effectively

00:13:41.860 no bottom line. What are you, what are you holding the president and the provost and your

00:13:46.220 leadership team of the university accountable to, uh, as a board member? And, uh, the answer is

00:13:52.480 it's, it's, it's not simple. There are multiple, there are often so many bottom lines. There's no

00:13:56.720 bottom line, uh, at all. And in many universities, it's really the, the leadership, the unit, the,

00:14:02.980 the, uh, the president, particularly if they're, they've been serving for a long time that really

00:14:06.640 sort of is driving the process and with sort of very little real, uh, board or, or trustee

00:14:12.080 oversight. So governance is a big problem in higher education. Right. And you also highlight

00:14:17.140 too that, you know, a lot of money, like you think we'd hire more teachers, right? But like

00:14:21.340 we actually end up, a lot of universities end up hiring more support staff to support all these

00:14:25.600 things that they're also investing in real estate, athletics, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

00:14:30.760 We call them the Dean let's. And if you look at the number of administrators at any college

00:14:36.540 today versus 30 years ago, it's just astounding. It's astounding. If you look at the increase in

00:14:41.300 spending, the increase in spending as obviously reflective of the, of the tuition, which has

00:14:45.600 really been sort of twice the rate of inflation for the past 30, 35 years, which obviously is

00:14:51.500 driving the whole student loan and affordability problem. But if you, if, if, if, if you, if you,

00:14:56.840 if you look at, uh, the growth of administrators, you, you, you don't see, uh, an increase in

00:15:02.180 spending actually in the classroom for the, for, for the most part. Now there's some institutions

00:15:06.440 where there are, there are, there are exceptions to that, but for the most part, the spending

00:15:10.300 has all been ancillary to the core educational experience.

00:15:14.720 Well, so let's talk about, uh, the student debt crisis, right? So young people, they bought

00:15:20.660 into the idea because that's how it is. That's how it's been for, I mean, a good 40 years,

00:15:24.520 50 years, 60 years. If you wanted a good job, you go to college. So they go to college

00:15:30.000 back in the fifties and sixties. Like when my parents were in college seventies, like they

00:15:35.120 were telling me about tuition costs. And I was like, geez, that was like the cost of

00:15:38.440 books. Right. So it made sense. You can go to college cause you'd afford it. But now

00:15:42.940 because of rising cost, you have to take out all this enormous amount of student debt, but

00:15:47.600 you're told, okay, well, it's okay to take out that debt because you're going to be able

00:15:51.440 to pay it back. Cause it's allow you to get a good job. So like, but that's not happening

00:15:55.660 anymore. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Why not? So what's happened? What's changed the, besides

00:16:00.840 increasing tuition costs, why, why isn't college paying off like it used to maybe even like

00:16:07.300 10, 15, 20 years ago?

00:16:08.800 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, just first on the, on the affordability, you're absolutely right

00:16:11.980 that, you know, in the seventies and even in the first half of the eighties, you could literally

00:16:16.200 pay for your tuition, uh, by taking a part-time job during the year and, and, and, and plus

00:16:21.540 the plus summer job, you pay the whole thing. You take on, on, on, on no debt. So we're in,

00:16:26.100 we're in a different world. Now the average student is graduating with about $40,000 in student loan

00:16:31.140 debt. You have horror stories, of course, of students with hundreds or hundreds of thousands

00:16:35.500 of student loan debt. Typically that's including graduate school, uh, as well. Uh, but it's a huge,

00:16:41.080 it's a huge problem. And for, for, you know, uh, up until now, colleges and universities have sort

00:16:47.240 of justified that under the banner of, well, a college degree is a college degree. And this is

00:16:52.160 what, you know, the elite schools, uh, charge the most selective schools, the Ivy league schools

00:16:57.480 charge. And so we can charge some discount to that, right? We've got some sort of, uh, anchor price

00:17:02.460 in the market that right now is about $60,000 a year, just tuition. And, uh, let me, let me remind

00:17:10.060 folks that if you're going to school in a, in a big city and increasingly students are opting for

00:17:15.160 sort of large urban schools, uh, the cost of room and board can be another 15, $20,000 a year.

00:17:22.040 So add that to the, add that to the bill and you see how, how, how cost and debt can add up,

00:17:27.580 uh, add up quickly. But the big, the big problem is now we, we, you know, affordability would still

00:17:33.040 work if, you know, 90% of students came out and we're going into sort of, uh, entry level jobs,

00:17:39.480 making 50, $60,000 a year at companies. That's not happening. And it's not happening, uh, because,

00:17:46.440 uh, for, for, for, for, for the three reasons I mentioned before, one, uh, the economy is digitized,

00:17:51.740 uh, which means virtually every, every, every good job, uh, that a college grad is going to want

00:17:56.980 is going to require some sort of digital or software skills. Colleges aren't teaching those

00:18:03.360 skills, right? You look at, so the most commonly used, uh, uh, SAS platform in the market is

00:18:10.400 Salesforce. There may be 20 schools out of 4,000 in the country that actually provide any material

00:18:15.920 training on the Salesforce platform. And it's obvious why, you know, faculty, you know, uh,

00:18:21.900 individuals who go into, uh, academia and want to teach, they don't want to teach Salesforce.

00:18:27.240 They view that as vocational training that's beneath them. Uh, but that's actually what employers

00:18:31.440 are looking for. If you look at over the last 10 years in job descriptions for entry-level jobs,

00:18:38.060 technical or digital skills now outnumber all other skills in those, in those job descriptions.

00:18:43.360 And because it's so easy now to apply for, uh, an online job posting, virtually, you know, every job

00:18:51.700 posting generates 300, 400, 500 resumes and no human hiring manager is capable of sorting through those

00:18:59.680 resumes. So these employers use applicant tracking systems, which are keyword based filters. And if

00:19:05.480 you don't have the requisite density of keywords, which are increasingly digital software oriented

00:19:12.100 keywords, uh, you're not going to be visible to employers. So that's a, that's a huge problem.

00:19:18.080 And increasingly these entry-level jobs do require managing some sort of business process through some

00:19:25.100 software platform. Uh, that's what these jobs require and college students aren't getting them

00:19:30.820 from a college. They're there. There's, you know, I have no quibble despite what I mentioned about

00:19:35.380 academically adrift before with the, uh, the level of cognitive skill development that colleges do. I

00:19:41.400 think it's as good as it was 30 years ago, 50 years ago, maybe better. But the problem is that the,

00:19:47.620 the employer market, the hiring market, uh, has changed. How hiring works has changed and what

00:19:53.560 employers are looking for has changed. And colleges have not come close to keeping up. I tell a story

00:19:59.280 in the, in the book that I'm fond of that sort of describes the, the, the attitude of, uh, your

00:20:04.400 typical college. There was an article last year in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which is a sort

00:20:09.500 of, you know, the trade paper of college America's colleges and universities. And it was about how Texas

00:20:15.100 A&M university somehow miraculously managed to develop a cybersecurity, uh, degree program in less

00:20:21.800 than two years. And so there was, you know, celebration about that, but then there was this

00:20:25.940 paragraph which said, but, you know, critics are asking whether or not the university is wasting

00:20:30.600 its time by doing this because won't the skills that, you know, are, are in the curriculum in this

00:20:37.240 program, won't it be obsolete in five years time? And, you know, that, that is an attitude that you

00:20:44.680 just don't see in any other industry, right? Does Apple not develop an iPhone because it's going to be

00:20:48.740 obsolete in five years, right? Does, you know, Boston Scientific not develop a new medical device

00:20:54.220 because it's going to be obsolete in five years, but in higher education, that really is the prevailing

00:20:59.320 view, uh, is that we don't, we don't want to, or need to align our curriculum to employer needs

00:21:05.240 because employer needs are going to change. And what we're, what we're teaching is eternal.

00:21:09.200 I think that's the, uh, that, that, that properly characterizes the attitude.

00:21:13.740 All right. So students are going into debt to go to college. They're graduating. They don't

00:21:17.440 have the skills they need to, that employers are looking for. So they end up, you know,

00:21:23.420 they're not be unemployed, but as you said, they're, they're underemployed. They end up with a job

00:21:26.920 that's paying far less. I mean, basically they didn't probably didn't need a college degree to

00:21:31.440 even do that job. That's right. And, you know, we say underemployment is acute and persistent.

00:21:36.620 So it's a real problem. So, so, so, so students are very focused now. Uh, the students, students get this,

00:21:42.420 their parents are increasingly getting it is that it's really about the first job. And again,

00:21:46.400 not discounting the importance of developing the critical, uh, thinking and cognitive skills and

00:21:51.540 executive function, everything that's going to make you successful and a good citizen.

00:21:54.520 All that is important, as I say in the book, but right now we have a situation where, uh, economically

00:22:00.540 the millennial generation is really sort of, uh, bleeding out on the table and, uh, it really calls 0.98

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 1.00

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,

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00:30:18.760 there. The future seems weird at first, so let it be weird. And now back to the show.

00:30:23.280 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

00:30:48.520 of teamwork, collaboration, et cetera, right?

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

00:31:34.980 month period within an environment like that.

00:31:37.580 So you mentioned that was the first version 1.0. What, what is version 2.0, 3.0 of these

00:31:42.760 alternatives to university looking like?

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

00:45:25.540 doing okay. Cause there's other alternatives.

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 4,000 articles there. Check it out if you haven't been over there. And if you haven't already, I'd

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00:49:54.160 for your continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - October 15, 2018

#449： Faster and Cheaper Alternatives to College

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