The Hidden Enrollment Market in Workforce Education:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 249 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Alana Rose

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed Podcast 249

Introduction to Changing Higher Ed^®

David: Welcome to Changing Higher Ed®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.

[00:00:20] Introduction and Guest Welcome

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David.

My guest today is Alana Rose, Vice President of Academic Networks at InStride, a unique company that partners with top-tier universities and educational institutions to deliver innovative workforce education programs at no cost to the student. With over a decade of experience in higher ed and university relations, Alana has a proven track record of fostering partnerships that drive institutional growth and expand access to education for working learners.

And she joins me today to talk about how workforce and corporate partnerships can help institutions tap into the hidden enrollment market. Those 41 million students who have stopped out. Alana, welcome to the program.

Alana Rose: Awesome is so great to be here Drumm. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to chat with you today.

Drumm McNaughton: Likewise, I think this is going to be a great conversation.

[00:01:18] Alana Rose’s Background and Career Journey

Drumm McNaughton: You’ve got a great background in higher ed, but what really attracted me to this conversation was what you guys are doing at InStride with employer funded education. So, before we get into that and all the benefits, et cetera, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Alana Rose: Yeah, I am someone that really needs to be driven by the mission of the work that I do. And I feel so lucky that I have gotten into a career that I’m super passionate about, because I really get to, and I have gotten to see the outcomes and value through creating life-changing access to education.

 My career and background have really been focused on partnering with higher ed institutions to help them innovate in a way that keeps them at the forefront of the ever-evolving world that we’re living in. I got started with a little company called Tutor. Who was a pioneer in the online program management or OPM space, and grew to be the very well-known company 2U. The majority of my time spent there was signing on the new partner institutions, pitching to universities across the country and the world, and really getting them to understand the importance of online education, the benefits it could bring to their schools and how to do it in a really high quality way.

From there, I moved to Trilogy Education, which partnered with universities to deliver high quality boot camp programming. I was then with Emeritus, which partners with universities to focus on delivering skills training through short courses and certificates. And two and a half years ago, landed here at InStride, where I’m the VP of the academic partner network and oversee our team of success managers.

But ultimately my path evolved as the space did too, right. Growing from working with universities to deliver online degrees, then bootcamps, then skills-based training, and I’m sure we’ll talk a little bit more about degrees versus nondegrees as we get into the discussion. But, here at InStride, I’m now in the workforce development space and I’m really excited to talk about that with you today. And the overarching theme of my career is really, ultimately, this partnership with institutions to understand the importance of innovating to stay on top of trends and gaining new sources of enrollment and revenue through these innovations, and then truly changing lives for learners.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, it’s interesting you bring up Tutor. I remember when Tutor got started many years ago, it was of university of Southern California, and you worked with a good friend of mine, Ronni Ephraim, who I worked with years ago when she was the director of instruction at LA Unified School District and worked for Governor Romer.

Alana Rose: That’s right. Yeah. She is a close friend of mine to this day. She interviewed me on a park bench at USC. I was a senior then, and all I knew was they were going to work with USC, and there they went. And really, we’re quite a disruptor in the space and, went on to do such amazing things, so it was really crazy, but great times.

Drumm McNaughton: Ronni’s a neat person. And that was my initial foray into education consulting. We had a great time and a lot of respect for Ronnie.

Alana Rose: Oh, yeah.

[00:04:45] InStride’s Mission and Model

Drumm McNaughton: Tell us about InStride. This is a new model of how the public-private partnerships, public IE, the institutions, union universities, colleges, et cetera, can partner with private entities to get college education funded for students. So just briefly tell us a little bit about it. If you would,

Alana Rose: Instride is really on a mission to solve the corporate talent challenges through education. We create these deep and thoughtful relationships with corporations and academic institutions, and really strategically marry the two together to help companies retain, upskill, fill critical roles through education programs that are designed to evolve with the pace of change.

We were founded in 2019. We’re backed by the nation’s most innovative university, Arizona State.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh, come on. No, no commercials for A. S. U.

Alana Rose: I, a USC grad, vouching for ASU is a little tough, but I, they are extremely innovative.

Drumm McNaughton: Who won football this year? Yeah,

Alana Rose: Ooh,

Yeah. It’s tough, and now we’re part of the big 10, so we’re really downhill from here, but yeah.

But previously ASU and Starbucks, if you remember, had created this groundbreaking partnership to expand access to education and they were serving over 25, 000 employees or learners, if you will, and so they really wanted to build on this success. And so InStride was born to continue tapping into this population of the non-traditional learner, who were looking for a life changing education.

 Since our inception, we’ve partnered with our academic institutions to build a network of over 3,500, I would say 3,500 and counting, cause we continue to grow, programs to support these working adults. And ultimately we, we see it as this “win, win, win situation”. So a three-way win situation, you have the employee or the learner who is really gaining a high-quality education and new skills that are relevant to their career mobility, that is debt-free and funded by their employer. You see the employer who’s getting better retention and they can also attract new and high quality talent because of these programs. And then you have the academic partners who are winning because they’re getting new learners from a pipeline that they otherwise wouldn’t have had access to without this partnership.

As it stands today, these programs are tapping into nearly 1 million eligible learners. So it’s truly a hidden source of new enrollments for higher ed institutions, which. We’re finding to be extremely successful for our academic partners.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, what’s interesting to me is there’s 41.5 million students who have stopped out. And they’re the nontraditional. They stopped out for a myriad of reasons. Financial is usually one of those things, demands on job, et cetera. And for whatever institution, whether it’s through InStride or it’s through an institution, being able to tap into that quote, it used to be known as the hidden job market, now it’s the hidden enrollment market, where it’s like you say, it’s a triple win. Universities can help their own enrollments, the employee gets education and new skills, and the employers get and can retain talent, which is critical. All those things.

Alana Rose: Exactly.

[00:08:47] Challenges and Opportunities in Higher Education

Drumm McNaughton: So we know that the model for higher ed is broken at this point. It’s very tuition dependent. It teaches things which aren’t necessarily relevant, although I would have some of my guests argue vehemently against that. Most companies require a bachelor’s degree for employment, and it costs a lot. There’s a whole bunch of reasons why this model has changed. And that’s what you’re doing with that is changing that model.

Alana Rose: Well, we’re also finding that there’s this shift with the new generation coming in, they’re quite risk adverse and they do have a fear of debt. It used to be that you would see folks going and making sure that they got a bachelor’s degree and then creating their career path, but now you often find that the younger generation, maybe they’re dabbling in education or maybe they’re gaining some skills. And then they’re getting a job, they want to make sure that they’re secure in where they’re at, and then maybe they’ll go back and finish their degree, dependent on what their employer is offering, or dependent on how that will help them go further in their career.

We are definitely big believers in the degree. I think the degree definitely takes you very far. It certainly shows in the data that it will help with promotions and things like that, but we want to make sure we’re taking out the risk for the learners and for this population that’s coming up.

And like you said, you want to make sure that we’re teaching what is relevant so that learners are succeeding in the workforce. Right? Once they get into the workforce, are they going to actually be able to do the jobs that are coming up? Right. There’s a lot of emerging technologies that are coming. We see it coming fast and furious with AI and all of those things, and so are they actually going to be able to keep up with that? Or are they learning things that are not Laff?

Drumm McNaughton: And interesting the guests that I had on last week. Scott Carlson and Ned Laff, who have just come out with a book, Hacking Higher Ed, or Hacking Education, College. They reference a study in there by Holt Business School and Holt is one of the top international universities in the country. It’s based out of Boston. Ninety-four percent of recent graduates have regrets about their degree and forty-three percent feel doomed to fail because they chose the wrong degree.

What you are doing, their premise is students when they come in, if they get the right advising and really explore and can tailor their degree program to what they need, they can go out. Your premise and what you’re doing is having people go out, explore the workforce, and then come back and have their employer fund their education.

Alana Rose: Exactly. Yeah. It’s learning more about what employees and employers want and actually gaining that knowledge to be able to succeed and to be able to go further in their career. And so that they’re learning the skills that they’re going to be successful rather than learning something that is not going to be useful for them 5 years, 10 years, 15, 20 years down the line.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, to me, that it’s a misnomer that college should train someone just for their first job. And this is where we’re focused on the workforce development. The thinking was that the bachelor’s degree taught you how to think, the master’s degree taught you specific skills within a niche area, and the phd degree was bringing new knowledge into being. That was the way they were described. With this latest focus on workforce development, are we really giving students the skills that they need to be successful in that first job, and I would argue “yes and no”.

Alana Rose: I think you’re still going to find the traditional learners that are going to want to get the bachelor’s degree first and go through that traditional route. But the non-traditional learners that we’re finding in workforce development programs, like at our partnerships, they’re not gaining the right skills to start, and so they’re coming into their employment, and then they are non-traditional learners. And so therefore you have to meet them where they’re at as well. And so you can’t treat them like a traditional learner in that sense, also.

To a certain degree, most of them have educational trauma also, and you need to rebuild their confidence as they get back into education. I mentioned it in the beginning, from the perspective of nondegree skills training and nondegree programming is just as valuable as the degree, and it builds them up to go into the degree, as well. And so this entire population is something to tap into for institutions and. It’s a very real population, like you said, 41.5 million of those stopped learners is real, and it’s there, and it’s something to focus on as institutions are thinking about growing programming on their campuses.

Drumm McNaughton: So that’s the institutional side and to some degree, the student side. Let’s swap the coin over, look at the other side.

[00:14:27] Corporate Partnerships and Workforce Development

Drumm McNaughton: What is corporate America really looking for in workers?

Alana Rose: Yeah, it’s so interesting because we did do a survey and, we found that 72 percent of workers prefer employer funded, online learning over traditional, self funded education, which is very interesting. But as we kick off 2025, businesses are going to be navigating slower hiring and skills shortages, which makes workforce education a critical lever for staying competitive. The future of workforce education is, again, about meeting employees where they are. Offering this flexibility while ensuring that the programs align with the evolving job requirements. And something that’s coming up more and more, I keep hearing it and reading about it, is this really real human tech balance as these rapid rise of, technologies like generative AI, institutions need to prepare learners for the future of work, but it’s also about combining the durable skills and the problem solving with this emerging technical training.

I was reading that one third of workforces are cross-metropolitan. So that means a worker lives in a different metropolitan area than their manager, which is up from 23 percent in 2020. And so that means that there’s a real challenge for managers with remote or hybrid teams to create and maintain a strong culture, and thus continue to upskill employees with durable skills content, is really important.

So companies and corporations are really looking to make sure that they’re staying up with the times, keeping up with this emerging technology, but also those durable skills and that leadership training and things like that is extremely important as well, and ensuring that they’re balancing the technical, soft, and business skills is really what they’re looking for. But the skills gap is real, and keeping up with that is really important.

Drumm McNaughton: And just so listeners understand what we’re saying here is the future workforce needs, there are going to be technical skills that are necessary, there’s business skills that are necessary, and then the durable skills, the AACNU survey that comes out, what are the most important skills that employers need, working in teams, critical thinking, analyzing data, et cetera, those type of things and these are things that a bachelor’s degree should be able to give folks. You’ve got so many people having to stop out and frankly, I think this is just a guess on my part, I don’t think people stop out for trivial reasons. They’ve got to have a job, they’ve got finances, their personal situation is such that they need to stop out.

I think they need to find something that they’re passionate about to be able to stay in and then they need help. Especially so many folks who are first generation or have never been to college. This is a huge experience and if they can bring college to them via online while working at a job and then have it funded as many institutions are many employers do, that to me make so much more sense.

Alana Rose: Yeah. A lot of times we see there’s life-changing events or death in the family. They need to take care of their family. Folks want education, but they also need to make sure that their lives are stable, and oftentimes that means having a job and an income, and that’s just the reality of living day to day. And so getting them to come back to school is what they want, that’s their passion, but, need to be able to live and put food on the plate, right?

Drumm McNaughton: Well it’s also incumbent on the institutions to provide a safety net for their students. And you know it’s one story that comes to mind, back about three years ago. A good friend of mine, Russell Lowery-Hart, was the president at Amarillo College. He’s now the chancellor at the Austin community college district in the Austin community. They put together these public private partnerships support for their students. And in one semester they had 99 of their students go home. That’s a number

Alana Rose: Wow.

Drumm McNaughton: They lost one student. The other 98 were able to keep going to school, et cetera, because they had put the safety net there in place.

Alana Rose: Wow.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s amazing. So swapping horses just a little bit. H

[00:19:25] Strategies for Higher Education Institutions

Drumm McNaughton: How does higher ed create these partnerships with corporations? How many institutions have this type of thing?

Alana Rose: Yeah. The partnerships in this space are definitely growing significantly. More and more institutions are looking to create programs that are meeting employers where they’re at. And obviously we’re seeing that the distance education programs are increasing. That trend is on the rise, and, not to give the pitch, but companies like InStride are a great way for universities to create partnerships because they really act as a bridge between academia and industry. Higher ed institutions need to understand that it’s more about the market insights from employers so that they are designing these relevant workforce education programs.

Drumm McNaughton: I’m gonna stop you with that, because that is something that I think is critical for higher ed, is to be able to get that corporate perspective. Right now higher ed, the faculty are responsible for, and they should be responsible for curriculum development, but too many times I’ve seen institutions that the faculty are siloed within their own areas of expertise and it’s not a good exchange for what employers need versus what the students need or what the faculty think the students should have.

Alana Rose: Yeah. Or what the faculty just want to teach. Right? And so gaining those market insights, I think, is what’s really important. And oftentimes, whether they don’t have time, there’s a lot going on. There’s other, things on their plate that they need to do, but that’s really what our responsibility is to gain the insights, gain the knowledge, gain research around what employers are looking for, what their needs are, what the gaps are, what positions are they trying to fill, and bringing that back to our academic partnerships to say, ” these are programs that are of need or of want or are really a critical gap right now that either you need to build or this would be, take off really quickly”. Typically that’s how higher ed can get into these workforce development partnerships rather quickly.

Drumm McNaughton: To reiterate the benefits to higher ed institutions, for employer funded education, it gives the corporations more loyalty, more retention. It helps the institution, the higher ed institution, with doing workforce development and getting the skills back to the company. And it helps companies fill those critical roles. And for the higher ed institutions, it’s being able to tap into non-traditional students you wouldn’t normally do.

Alana Rose: Exactly. Exactly.

Drumm McNaughton: So how does an institution go about establishing these kinds of partnerships?

Alana Rose: I would say that one way to first do it is that the leadership needs to determine that it is a priority. Right? I’ve had a lot of conversations with our own partnerships, that it’s clear that traditional enrollment is on the decline, and that’s why there’s a focus on our partnerships to build enrollment. And so if leadership on campus is looking to grow enrollment, then this is a way to do that. And certainly folks can start to create partnerships with either a third party like ours that creates partnerships with corporations or sometimes they go direct with companies as well. That obviously doesn’t expand the partnerships as drastically.

But I just wanted to reiterate a point that this employer-funded education is something that is growing with companies as well. Just so that higher ed institutions understand that over half of the employers out there are offering this tuition assistance, and it is growing, and it’s not only about offering the benefits. So one important thing as well, where the higher ed institutions come into play is that it’s really about creating this strategic partnership to ensure that the programming is relevant for the corporation. Right? It’s not just about offering the programs to the employees and, shake your hands and you’re done. You want to make sure that the program is designed for this nontraditional learner and also that the program offerings are tailored to upskill and reskill the employees at that specific corporation, or to fill critical roles. Right? We’ve worked with corporations that have very specific, especially in health care, that is, where there’s clear shortages, and we’ve worked with specific corporations that need very specific roles, and then go back to the academic partners to create programming for that specifically.

Again, it’s not just about offering an education benefit. It’s about really being strategic about how you’re offering it, what the programming looks like, and then, again, this nontraditional learner is so different than the traditional learner, and ensuring that they feel supported and have the resources as they’re coming into or back into. Some of them haven’t taken a program in however many years and you want to make sure that they feel supported and continue through the program. That’s something that we talk about a lot. Right? It’s one thing to start, it’s another thing to finish.

And so we’re really always focused as well on making sure that these learners are finishing their programming, and that they have the support that they need. And oftentimes that may fall on the institution as well as they’re going through their programming. So I think that’s also important things to flag for the institutions.

Drumm McNaughton: Usually these kind of programs, at least my experience, they’re funded through continuing education. You know it’s a corporate partner. But it needs to be more a quote regular education perspective. There needs to be advisory boards that will help with curriculum development, the advisory boards made up of people from corporations saying, “this is what we’re seeing, this is what we need, et cetera”. And something you mentioned earlier that really struck me, as critical, you’ve got to meet the students where they are versus making, faculty typically say, well, the students need to come up to our place, with non-traditional students, that’s not going to happen.

Alana Rose: No, it’s not. It really isn’t. And, started off by saying the thing that really drives me and what I’m passionate about is this access to education and access to life-changing education. And so, if you really don’t meet the learner where they’re at, they’re not going to get access to this. They’re going to turn away. They may not have the background, they may have been one of those stopped out learners. They may not have the prerequisites, but you can work with them to get them there. That is always possible. There are stepping stones to get them there.

And there’s a lot of, now, new and inventive ways to do stackable credentials and do transfer credits for different programming and things like that. And so how can institutions think outside the box and be more innovative to really help these nontraditional learners, get to where they want to go? Because they’re pretty remarkable and they want to get this life changing education and we want to help them get there.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, it’s two, two quick stories. One myself, when I went back to graduate school, I had been advised that I needed to do that. And there were 20 years between the time that I graduated with a physics degree and going back to take a PhD program in human and organizational systems. Big timeframe. I didn’t feel like I belonged there until I went and observed, and at the school that I went to the field and graduate university, they open up the defense, they call it the final oral review. They open that up to anyone who wants to participate. And I went in and I observed one of these. And at that point I said, I can do this. It was that sense of belonging.

Alana Rose: Yep.

Drumm McNaughton: This is so critical for nontraditional students because they’ve had some sort of thing happen in their life that they haven’t been able to follow the traditional path, high school, going to college, university, et cetera.

The other one is, a woman that I know. She is the president at Lucy Cavendish College, which is part of the University of Cambridge, Madeleine Atkins, and they had a goal. Cambridge, you go to elite prep schools, et cetera, you get in and up to a point, they only had 30 percent coming from public institutions. Well, they had a goal to make that 90 percent from public institutions and it took a lot of work.

Faculty would go out. They would work with high school students to get them ready, et cetera. But it was a nontraditional path into college, and the orientation for most students was one week prior to, and they showed you around the campus, they had a bridge week for these non-traditional students. They put him in a classroom setting, you know, they have a tutorial model versus lecture, et cetera. So they put them in that, they gave him exams, they gave him in depth tour. So by the time they got to orientation, they already had that feeling of belonging. That is what is so critical with what you guys are doing is having students get that sense of belonging to where they walk in and, regardless of what circumstances come up, they believe they can do that.

Alana Rose: I love that. I love those stories. And there are sometimes things that are so, I don’t want to say small, but things that you don’t even think of from the perspective of making the programming mobile friendly, right? A lot of the nontraditional learners that we work with they’re on the move. Right? They may be just, constantly on their phone rather than sitting in front of their computer. So, making sure that they could take classes from their mobile devices. Also, I think that it’s maybe changing the perception of non-traditional learner, because I think sometimes that perception could be a little bit negative and ensuring that these learners are going to be just as successful as the traditional learner.

And especially after, here we are five years almost outside of COVID. At least the pandemic, I know folks still get COVID, but I think we will see even more of an uptick of the non-traditional learner from students that were either going into their college years or high school years around that time. And again, with this uptick in the generation that are risk adverse and having a fear of debt.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, I think you’re spot on with that and with the demographic cliff, which is approaching. Fall 2025 intake class is going to be the last large one for a while. And so I think being able to tap into this non-traditional student market, employer funded education is going to be critical. You’ve got to put the structures in place to be able to do that.

Alana Rose: Absolutely.

Drumm McNaughton: Alana, this has been a fascinating conversation. I normally don’t talk this much, but this is a subject that’s very passionate to me. I want to thank you for coming on the show.

Alana Rose: This has been great.

[00:31:39]

Drumm McNaughton:

 I’m glad I haven’t, taken things off track too much, but I do have two final questions for you. The same questions I ask every guest.

Alana Rose: Great.

[00:31:48] Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards

Drumm McNaughton: What are the three takeaways that you have for university presidents and boards on how they can tap into this hidden enrollment market and create this win that we need?

Alana Rose: Three takeaways. So I think, the first, obvious takeaway is to get into corporate partnerships, if you haven’t already at your institution. It is clear there is an enrollment stream that is available for their institution that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to, and don’t underestimate the power of this non-traditional learner. Especially in this risk-averse generation, and these learners are fully capable, but they’re more likely to go to the workforce first before pursuing their full degree.

The second takeaway that I think is really important, and we’ve talked about a bit, is really, I would say, focus on creating more of the access for this non-traditional learner. I think that pathway programs, or expanding transfer credits, or working with the non-traditional learner, or lowering the barrier to entry, or at least creating support for the learners to enter. If you’re going to create the corporate partnerships, you have to at least be able to allow for the learners to get into them. So, I think that’s a very important thing to marry together.

And then the third I would say is to then, at least to the university presidents, pay attention, maybe, to the departments on your campus working on these sorts of projects. Often, I find they are potentially under-resourced, and that’s my pitch to help them. They are going to be flooded with enrollments, I can tell. So they may need some more admin help and operators and things like that working campus

Drumm McNaughton: Those are great. I’m going to add one more to that. Is you’ve got to be listening to who your corporate partners are about what they need. You’re there, you’re creating a partnership, you’re not a standalone factory widget. The talent supply chain where you take raw materials, you educate them and you push them out the door. You’re in a partnership to make sure that product that you push out the door, that educated student, has the skills necessary that his or her corporate partner needs to be able to retain.

Alana Rose: Market needs are real.

Drumm McNaughton: Exactly. So what’s next for you?

Alana Rose: What’s next for me? Definitely a couple courses for sure. I’m already enrolled. I mean we practice what we preach here. So we do have an employer funded program. So I’m already enrolled in a leadership course, and then I need to enroll in something involved in AI, because as we’ve talked about, those are the two that we need to marry together. So, that’s definitely on the docket for me. But, I think more conversations like this, truthfully. Ultimately we need to keep talking about things like this, and we need to make sure that everyone is paying attention to the trends that are coming. I think that having more conversations and getting, especially higher ed institutions, to pay attention around things like this that are happening, and getting innovations and partnerships, happening across industry, I think is really important.

So , that I think is where I see myself.

Drumm McNaughton: I love it. A lifelong educator. Excellent.

Alana Rose: Hopefully.

Drumm McNaughton: Alana, thank you so much for being on the show. I’ve enjoyed our conversation and I wish you all the best going forward.

Alana Rose: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This has been great.

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you. Bye. Bye.

[00:35:46] Conclusion and Farewell

Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening today. And a special thank you to my guest, Alana Rose, vice president of academic networks at InStride. Alana, thank you for being on the program. I look forward to our getting a chance to chat again in the near future.

Listeners, thanks again for listening. Look forward to next time.