4.03. Geordie Hyland, MBA - American College of Education

Welcome to episode three of season four of the Plexus Presidential Podcast. In this episode, Dr. J. P. Noven sits down with Jordy Highland, president of American College of Education, to discuss AI, affordability, student debt, and why higher education must become more flexible, skills driven, and student-centered to meet the demands of the future workforce. Welcome to season four of the Higher Education Leader Podcast. This season builds on the conversation from last season as we go deeper into the intersection of policy AI and the evolving role of higher education. This season we're really focused on some of the most forward-thinking and innovative university presidents. More than 50 presidents have graciously agreed to share their perspective and strategies they're deploying to navigate today's pressing challenges, particularly as institutions rethink their role in developing human capital for rapidly changing economy. I'd like to thank our sponsor, A. Su. GS. V. This podcast will be shared on Spotify and on college admission TV. I'm your host, J. P. Noven. I'm honored to be joined by one of the more innovative presidents and CEOs of the Higher Education industry. Jordy Highland, CEO at American College of Education. Welcome, President Highland. Hi, D. P. I'd like to be on the show and look forward to the conversation. Super. I'll hand it back to you. Tell us a little bit about your background, your journey to this role, and then share with our audience a little bit about American College of Education, please. Sure. Yeah, so just in terms of my background and role, earlier in my career I was in Sponsored Time in Finance and then Ed Tech. And then for well over a decade I've been supporting adult learners and fully online education in a number of different roles. And I've been the CEO of American College of Education for almost four years now. American College of Education is a fully online, unique institution in Hyrette. It was founded in 2005 and the goal was really to provide a affordable, high-quality Hyrette experience and programming for teachers and now nurses. We're most of our students are at the Masters of Doctoral level and we made a foundational decision not to accept title for funding and that even though we're credited by the Higher Learning Commission and to keep our tuition affordable and our programming relevant. And so we've scaled now to about 14,000 active students. We have kept our tuition affordable so our Masters degrees are less than $10,000 or doctoral degrees less than $25,000. And our typical student is an adult learner that's working full-time either a teacher or a nurse that can get through without going into debt. So typically they pay term by term and 87% of our students come out without debt. And because we've been so focused on the student value proposition we really wanted to quantify the ROI. So we have third-party market research, a team of economists from Lightcast come in and calculate that for every $1 invested in our tuition our students get $19.20 in future career earnings. We're very proud of that value proposition and then the many of the benchmarks that we have for quality whether it's employer satisfaction, satisfaction of 94% graduate MPS net promoter score of 73. So we're really really high feedback metrics for us and so we're very proud of our high quality experience for teachers and nurses and the fact that they can get through get a degree which leads to career progression without crippling debt. And you offer even programs, you offer masters and doctors as well? For teachers we can basically take a paraprofessional teachers' assistant all the way through to a superintendent. So we have bachelor completers where we can accept associate degrees to complete a bachelor's. We have licensure, ulcered licensure and then we have a range of masters EDF and EDD doctor programs. For nursing, we're post licensure, it's nursing leadership training and then we have a business vertical where we have leadership training in an MBA for less than 10,000 dollars. It's amazing how affordable tuition is at ACE. I mean it's how do you, because always hear the complain president Highland that is because of all the accreditation and everything that goes into it is prohibitive to offer a high quality low cost education. How do you manage to do that and how do you manage to have so many people find jobs? I guess a lot of them are already employed, right, or are they, they're all employed at the moment, right? Yes. And so I think it's important to provide some context so we were built from the ground up as a fully online institution. As I mentioned we decided not to participate in the Title IV federal student financing program. So we don't have a huge team around student finance and then we are also solely focused on high quality teaching and learning. So we build all of our curriculum in-house, we don't work with third-party publishers which lead to a premium and then we don't have a huge range of other priorities that a traditional school would have, whether it's huge facilities, sushi in the dining hall, massive national marketing campaigns, basically a lot of traditional schools that seems at this point have almost professional sports franchises that they're managing and paying players and paying coaches. I mean we are solely focused on serving our students, creating relevant programming for them. We have a really strong feedback loop from our thousands of employer partners. And I think because of that focus and then a commitment to continuous improvement and not accepting the federal loans which then I think are a temptation to price with how much access to loans your students have, I think have helped us maintain that commitment to the quality and to the affordable. That's amazing, great job. So I want to just start from a high level question which is in your opinion at its core what is the purpose of higher education today and where do you think institutions may be aligned or misaligned with that mission? Well I think so I think what we're focused on is providing a career, the equipping our students with the skills for a career path and to get ahead in their careers. So we're working closely with employer partners, we're creating programming and curriculum and instructors that are bringing in real world examples to equip our students to get ahead in their careers and remember all of our students are working adults, the work-eful time, they have life commitments with family, the caregivers, the elders, work-eful time and studying as well. So I think we have a very specific focus within higher ed. I think overall higher ed has traditional higher ed has lost its way in terms of whether the focus is on the student value proposition like us or the institutional value proposition and as I mentioned they have lots of different focuses that they need to work on and I think there's a lot of skepticism about that value proposition in higher ed and I'm sure you've seen the latest survey results which suggest that the faith in the value of going to higher ed is at its lowest level. I think the latest Gallup polls suggest as like 32 percent and I think there's a lot of challenges for traditional higher ed to show a clean ROI but also then articulate what that value proposition is and then that has been combined with huge levels of tuition inflation over time which has then passed on to the debt to the students which is then being used to subsidize a lot of the efforts of the institution every side of teaching and teaching and learning. So I think at summary we have a very clear mission and focus I think for the larger higher ed industry it's a bit of a challenge. for. Yeah, and we did a survey of over 100 presidents who actually cited not the enrollment clip as the biggest concern. Okay. The negative perception of higher education. Yeah. It was, was a big, big concern to them. That's very interesting. So, you know, there's a lot of talk about policy and the big, beautiful bill. Now, you're not part of title four. You chose to opt out for all the reasons you mentioned. But does that policy impact institutions such as yours as well? Well, it's interesting. So, one part of, I'll just pull out one part of that. Not all see to kind of illustrate, I think, the difference between how it impacts traditional institutions and ours. So, one of the changes was around the categorization of nurses and teachers. And to put nurses and teachers in a category where the limit for the programs was debt of $200,000 or $50,000 a year and bringing that down to $100,000 in $20,000 in debt a year. For us, where we price appropriately and we focus on teaching and learning, you know, our masters are less than $10,000 or doctoral is less than $25,000 and 87% of students come out with no debt. So, it really just makes it take step back and say, well, that's certainly a step in the, in the right direction. But a larger question should be asked, why are teachers and nurses even at the new levels being encouraged or facilitated the ability to go into debt even at those levels and they don't have to for us. So, we really, with our pricing and our focus, we really operate outside of the implications of that legislation. Interesting. What are the two or three headwinds that KPOF ignite? What are financial, demographic, technological, political, what keeps you up as a present and an institution? Well, so I think we're people-driven institution. So, we certainly want to make sure we continue to find talented people and retain them. We're fully online for our students, but also our staff and I think that allows us to recruit talented people from all over the country and not require them to move to a physical location. And we're fortunate at this point to be able to retain our top performers. So, that's one thing. I think the technological change, especially with AI and otherwise, is causing a lot of change for sure. I feel like our institution is nimble enough to be able to adapt and be on the front end of that change, but we certainly are focused on that and want to continue to do that. And then, given the change of the technology, the employer expectations are changing for employees and we train employees. And so, making sure we're getting that strong feedback loop from employers quickly infusing it into our curriculum and maintaining relevance and our value proposition is another thing that's always on my mind and something that we're committed to. So, one of your most popular programs is nursing and I gather that because you're online and it's not a traditional, rotational, clinical, most of these nurses are already working at those jobs, correct? Is that how they get? Could you tell us about something like nurse because you have RN to BSN, RN to MSN. How do you manage to click clinical demand for those types of major? So, for nursing, it's post-licensure and so it's leadership training and so we're able to train the nurses fully online with a close connection to what they're doing on the job and bringing the curriculum live, making sure that there's case studies and real life examples and at the end of weekly courses assignments that allow them to bring the learnings into the job. But it's post-licensure so it's past the stage where they're in person doing clinicals and needing that in person element to it. And you have a very big footprint on education, right? You have the master's education and the EDD as well. Who are those folks who are they? Teachers are they superintendents, who are the types of people that are actually being attracted to your program offering? Yeah, so it's a range. So, early on in our program offering, we attract paraprofessionals who are teachers assistants, who have an associate degree that can bring that into our master's computer and then get a teacher licensure to move ahead to become teachers. And then we have a huge number of teachers that come to us for career progression to study and receive a master's to then be able to move ahead in their career and with their pay. We also have a number of certificates, for example, principal certificates, which again facilitates career progression. And then the EDS and the EDDs help with the progression for teachers and also help them progress to leadership positions in their districts. So we've got a huge range of programming that can facilitate that career progression and the programs actually map together. So, for example, from a master's you can bring in 17 credits into the doctoral program, which in some cases so that can even bring down costs further. The other thing that we do to really try to drive value for the teachers and facilitate career progression is that teachers often have to take a lot of professional development and especially in the age of AI where things are changing, it's really important for them to stay up to date on all of the latest changes. And we provide credit for prior learning as appropriate into our college courses or programs which can further shave off credits and sometimes in a master's degree that's less than $10,000 that can shave off another $1,000 or $2,000 for the teachers with that professional development coming in. I think in general in high red there's a lot of barriers to credit for prior learning to protect the revenue of the institution. Again, we're really focused on the student value proposition and affordability and quality as well. So we have an internal team that assesses the professional development to make sure that it's able to be brought in from an academic perspective and partner with our faculty and leverage the best practices of an industry group tail and our credit or agency. For those who are not as immersed in online as you are because don't call it, everyone just said, okay, I'm just going to put up Zoom and that's going to be in our online version. Some got kind of cute with recording, some under a session. What is a true online immersive experience look like as for the student, for the faculty and how is that any different than just joining an online Zoom? Yeah, so that's a great question and I would call a lot of that type of learning that you just mentioned during COVID that was put together quickly as a emergency remote learning as opposed to online learning. I think that there's a lot of power to a fully online school that builds online programs and focuses on them. I think one of the areas is the curriculum. So there's a centralized curriculum model. We build in the house, many schools work with publishers, but because we build it in house, we can map where an centralized perspective what the student needs to learn and then build to it and then track the efficacy and also the be able to make updates based on feedback from the employers. So there's a quality and a relevancy that's ensured by that centralized curriculum model. From a faculty perspective, we have hundreds of faculty to apply for each role. There's a lot of interest in the fully online positions. We have a practitioner model, so our instructors are bringing real world skills and experience and then they're able to benefit from the fact that the students are in the fully online LMS and they can see all of the progress and also the areas where they're having challenges and the time spent to the proxy for effort and they're able to intervene to assist the student at appropriate times and then leverage the techniques of the various techniques to make sure that the intervention is effective. And so it's a model that from a curriculum and a structural perspective is very powerful and I think is not fully understood at times in terms of just how different it is but what the benefits are. And I think that what I'm describing is available for the power online schools in terms of just being focused on it but there's another element in terms of leveraging AI to be even more effective to take off as much of the administrative burden as possible to further enable the faculty to intervene and build those person-to-person interactions and trust with Zoom. - And I think just to extend to what you're saying, a lot of some of your programs have practiconed that feel experience, that internship, licensure, dissertation, preceptor-based requirement. So it seems that there is a lot that goes into a fully immersed experience, correct? - It's a very thoughtful approach and as opposed to a more dispersed approach when you have individual faculty building their own materials for a course at a campus school, this is a centralized approach. We have an internal team of curriculum developers that partner with our trained instructor, subject matter experts to build and keep the curriculum updated and alive and in control of, okay, what are the outcomes that we're building to? And then are the students engaging with the content as effective to be updated? And then are they ultimately learning the skills that are needed? And we have a huge commitment to continuous improvement where we're receiving feedback on an ongoing basis from students at the end of every course, but also the annual survey and then we're also getting feedback from the employer partners and the faculty to incorporate it into ongoing continuous improvement efforts to make sure that we continue to serve the needs of the students and ultimately as well the employers where they're working. - If I ask you a few questions about AI, could you expand upon this concept of lifelong learning because it just seems to me that you're a perfect conduit for those who want to actually pursue lifelong learning. But is that happening? Are you seeing students later in their life coming back and saying, this is both affordable and informative for me to pick up a course or pursue a degree here? - Yeah, I mean, I think AI is leading to the need for the pace of technological change. Lifeline learning is for all of us is becoming more and more important. I think especially for teachers as well, the tools are changing, student behaviors are changing, expectations are evolving and it's beyond a set of tools they have to use professional judgment in the new instructional environment. And so lifelong learning is incredibly important for teachers. We have that suite of programs that build upon each other. We do see a lot of students come back. But then we also have that commitment to the credit for the professional development, which I think encourages lifelong learning because it means that the professional development is more valuable because as appropriate, some of it can be counted towards a degree. We also, we partner with thousands of school districts to raise awareness with teachers about the opportunities for the degrees, but also the lifelong learning and bring in the professional development. So we certainly do what we can to get the word out there, but I think for individuals in the workplace at this point, it's just the way of the world at this point. - So this is a great segue to talk about AI. To what extent do you believe AI will reshape? Not just how we teach, but how we manage our universities, but actually, yeah, let's get to that. And then I wanna talk about AI and its impact on the workforce after that, please. - Yeah, so I think in terms of the way that we manage at the university, it's incredibly impactful how it's changing things. I think that typically technology investment or technology adoption is slow at in higher ed. There are all these tools that are available for students, but also for the workforce. And so institutions really need a commitment to infuse again in the curriculum, making sure that their students are AI literate as they move back out into the workforce, but then there's all sorts of opportunities for the institutions to leverage AI at ACE. We've implemented a number of AI products and then we're also in the process of implementing some agenda AI and the front end of our processes to properly support prospective students as they navigate our enrollment funnel. And following that, we also have some invitations around supporting students to supplement the instructor support. But I think the overall vision is to take off as much administrative work as possible, as I mentioned. So our faculty can focus on supporting students and also for staff to be able to focus as much as they can on the value added tasks. - So how do you make sure, 'cause I mean, part of what we're doing in higher education, it comes down to mastery, right? How do we make sure now that you could use, students can use agentic, or just, you know, LLMs and what have you to answer questions faster and what have you, how do we make sure, especially in an asynchronous environment that students are truly getting mastery of the topic and not just doing checkbox, and I'll give you an example. So I teach a course occasionally, you see Berkeley, they're really a doll learner program. And so some people just don't like to come to the life sessions. They prefer doing the asynchronous, right? But it's very hard, I find it very difficult to decipher sometimes between, you know, what a student has gone from LLM until I have him to present something, right? Until they have to come in front and present the topic and the subject, but in an asynchronous environment, I do make sure that they actually have mastery of the topic. - Yeah, so they're, I think the focus on the traditional assessment and transitioning it to a redesigned evaluation where we're creating assignments that measure reasoning, originality, and process in a world where polished outputs are easier to generate. So I think our centralized curriculum model helps us with updating those assignments and evaluations. And I know that's been a focus for quite some time. In terms of navigating mastery, I mentioned this, but we use a backward design model and scaffold courses and assignments. So the concepts are introduced, reinforced, and mastered. And then we monitor the learning outcomes to ensure the students are demonstrated that they meet these outcomes and master the subject. So mastery is a measurement of skills and it's an ongoing art and focus force. - How long are your semesters or your terms of five weeks? - Okay, so they're pretty quick. That makes it easy. As far as AI and how you're managing your organization, how is that impacting your day-to-day management of the institution? - Well, I think when AI is done right, it leads you to have more information more quickly. So we've been putting in place some earlier warning systems, leveraging AI, which allows us to get in front of changes in terms of the trends. And then we also use traditional higher ed tech platforms and one of the benefits of AI is being able to work around some of the limitations of the platforms to get more access to data more quickly and more usable data quickly. So those are, I think, two use cases I would call out in terms of just being able to accelerate and move more quickly. - So there is a conundrum. comes to policy and AI because AI is just accelerating and it's compounding so fast, like no technology we've seen before. So as AI advances faster than regulations, what role should higher education play in shaping policy? And more importantly, our institutions mentor respond to policy or help define it? Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of AI policy, higher ed institutions should be at the table along with government and industry and I think there should be a range of important stakeholders represented in those discussions. So I think faculty and teachers should be represented as well and employees and I think that it's important to get the broad scope of the implications of AI on the table as policies are created. This question came up a lot. I know you're a board member, right, at ASU, GSV. So this question, advisory board. Yeah, one of the founders actually, Michael Moe is on our board. So we're very fortunate. Oh, fantastic. Yes. Michael does a great job and is a fantastic conference and there's so much that goes on in that conference, right? It's not. Yeah, underview. And it's like you're a kid in a candy store and very often I had a hard time deciding which sessions to go to because there were so many interesting hundreds and hundreds, but more importantly, great people and perspectives there. And so this question of equity in the age of AI came up several times in different sessions, right? So the question is access to AI, can it create a competitive advantage? Can it actually narrow the equity gap, but it could also actually exacerbate it, right? How do you think about AI? How do you think about the equity gap in the context of ACE? And also I think there's a couple of different contexts to call out. I think Hyred in general is slow to adopt new technology and has structural challenges. So I think there's an opportunity for us to have more impact and move quickly and be nimble and benefit from the changing technologies. That's one piece. But I think in terms of the equity piece, it was interesting. I was at a number of sessions for teachers and ed tech providers and there were all these new tools and there were teachers that would give feedback and say like, well, I have like 85 different technology tools and none of them are created with the teacher workflow in mind. So I think there's a real opportunity for the way that technology gets adopted at the end user level for teachers and to be able to have it be used and to make people more effective is to really give feedback to it. And I think obviously K12 education is a huge impact on equity. So I think there's a real opportunity for there to be a focus on the efficacy of the tools and how they're trained and how they're used to be able to actually enrich teaching as opposed to make the job busier for teachers. A couple of two more questions. One is about institutional carriage. What is something you believe higher education leaders know that needs to be done but they're hesitant to say or act on it. I don't want to sound like a worker record but this is one of the things that ASU GSD with the context of $1.6 trillion about standing student loans and huge debt levels for students that impact their lives, their ability to make like decisions by houses. There was not a lot of discussion around student debt and the implications of student debt. And I think that needs to be on the table. I know that with the big beautiful bill you mentioned there's some limitations being put in place. But I think over the last couple of years, I mean if you look at the trajectory of student tuition inflation and student debt levels, it's been huge. There's been a lot of conversations around how do we give debt relief to graduates that already have that. I think there needs to be more focus on the institutions and the processes that are leading to the students being able to and being having to take on the debt. So I think there have been some steps in this direction but it's to your point about kind of the elephant in the room. I think it's there a lot and not discussed as much as you would think given the debt crisis. Simply fast forward five years. What will your institution look like and what will be fundamentally different from today? Huh, okay. Well that's a really good question. So I think if I again if I focus on teacher preparation, I think it's going to be far more experiential. Pre-service training will be heavily relying on AI powered simulations. And then I think the clinical experience is going to be more data informed. AI will provide more real time insights in the student understanding and allowing for more precise coaching during student teaching. So I think there will be more efficiency. And then I hope that as the awareness about what you mentioned, the biggest concern for a lot of administrators is the faith in the value proposition of higher ed. I hope that there's going to be a move to create a more focused on teaching and learning and to bring the tuition down to provide more access to quality teaching and learning that doesn't lead to huge debt levels. And so if in five or ten years if there's that pathway for that more enriched learning experience combined with more affordable pathways, I think that will be hugely important for us overall as a country. Because it also relates to what you were saying about the need for lifelong learning. If at each step of the run there's exorbitant prices and huge amounts of debt, that's a barrier to lifelong learning. It's the barrier to people being able to get the skills to adapt, to perform it and have the adaptability needed to succeed in their jobs. So it's a really important consideration as we think about the human capital in this country. As a highlight, thank you so much. Yeah, thanks, I really appreciate it. Thank you for joining the Plexus Presidential Podcast. For more information, please visit us at plexus.com/solutions. Thank you.