The Rant Podcast
A bi-weekly podcast focused on pulling back the curtain on the American higher education system and breaking down the people, the policies and the politics. The podcast host, Eloy Ortiz Oakley, is a known innovator and leader in higher education. The podcast will not pull any punches as it delves into tough questions about the culture, politics and policies of our higher education system.
The Rant Podcast
Reshaping Higher Education: A Deep Dive with Fernando Bleichmar, CEO of Academic Partnerships
Unlock the potential of online education as Fernando Bleichmar, CEO of Academic Partnerships, joins us to reveal how his company is helping regional universities reach more learners through online programs. This episode promises a deep exploration into how AP is broadening access to affordable, career-centric programs, especially in vital sectors like nursing and education. We dissect the online program management (OPM) industry and its pivotal role in supporting regional universities to launch and sustain successful online programs, ensuring they are not only competitive but also addressing the pressing demand for skilled professionals.
Experience the strategic conversation around the recent acquisition of Wiley University Services by Academic Partnerships, and how this move amplifies the benefits of scale, advancing technology, and infrastructure to better connect employers with universities and students. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the evolution of higher education, as we examine the intricacies of forming educational partnerships that are crucial for social mobility and career advancement. Fernando's insights provide a unique window into the transformative power of scale in the education sector and the positive ripple effects it creates across regions.
As we wrap up, Fernando casts a light on the nuanced impacts of regulation in education and the essential balance between protecting students and enabling universities to thrive. We probe into the shift towards more transparent fee-for-service models and how Academic Partnerships champions student success through their collaborations. This episode is an invaluable resource for grasping the complexities of policy, regulation, and the future direction of the OPM marketplace. Don't miss Fernando's thought leadership on these critical issues that shape the academic journeys of countless aspiring professionals.
Hi, I'm Eloy Ortiz-Oakley and welcome back to the Rant, the podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies and the politics of our higher education system. In this episode, we dive back into a really important issue that we've been covering lately online program management companies, otherwise known as OPMs and today we are specifically talking about and talking with academic partnerships, or AP. As you recall, in one of my previous episodes, I sat down with Phil Hill and we had a lengthy discussion about the OPM marketplace and, specifically, the drama surrounding 2U. So today I have the opportunity to sit down with the CEO of one of the more successful OPMs in the country, fernando Blakechmar. Fernando leads academic partnerships and his organization is leading work throughout the nation, building partnerships with colleges and universities to offer online programs, and is an important player in the OPM marketplace. So, with that backdrop today, please join me in welcoming Fernando. Fernando. Welcome to the Rant.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me, Eloy, and great to see you again.
Speaker 1:Good to see you too, and thanks for being willing to spend a little bit of time. I know how busy you are. So, fernando, you lead one of the better-known online program management companies Academic Partnerships. Tell us about AP's mission, some of its history and how you differentiate yourself in this OPM marketplace, which has gotten kind of wild lately.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, silo, and great to be here. Yeah, thanks, silo, and great to be here.
Speaker 2:So, interestingly, I think there's a lot of conversation about OPMs but there's not a lot of our conversation of what we do and why we exist. So and it's interesting because it gets a little bit lost in dialogue Right, our mission at AP is very simple. We work with mostly regional universities to help them expand access to affordable, high-value programs and in workforce-ready areas, especially nursing education business. We think that we are helping universities that otherwise might struggle to compete in a changing world where a lot of students want to learn and obtain their degrees or their skills online. We bring the skill set, the capabilities, the capital to help some of those universities increase access, basically, and increase it with a view to affordability and very high ROI.
Speaker 2:I think the part that gets a little bit lost in the dialogue is what are the outcomes? Right, and what we are very proud of of what we do at Academic Partnerships is because of the type of schools we partner on, because of the types of students. We focus on the ROI numbers that we just published a very big report with a third-party company called Ipsos and the numbers are really, really good. The graduates take an average of 1.2 years to pay for their degree, so our average degree is, let's call it, $15,000 for the entire degree and with the increasing salary that someone has after they graduate, their average increasing salary is $13,000. So, just with the increasing salary they pay in 1.2 years, 85% of graduates say that the degree was worth the investments. 54% of students actually don't take any debt and the ones that take debt the 46% that takes debt take an average of $6,000.
Speaker 2:So, really, what we look at in our mission and what we focus on is are we helping solve some of these critical shortages for teachers, for nurses, for people to upskill more complex world in a way that delivers high ROI and doesn't create burdens, doesn't add to the debt crisis, et cetera? So that's what we focus on, that's what we do. I think sometimes in the dialogue of OPMs, what's a little bit lost is why does this company exist? And this company in our case, we exist because we think it's critical what we do to help the schools we work with to expand access for a really great product that they have for students that otherwise might not be able to do it because they're mostly working adults.
Speaker 1:You hit on something that's critically important, particularly in the conversation in post-secondary education, this conversation around ROI, the return on investment and creating value for learners. This is something that certainly learners are paying attention to because they are voting with their feet, they're making statements every day about whether or not to attend post-secondary education because whether they see the value or not in the price that they're paying, the investment they're making. We have a huge conversation in the country around debt, and so there's this question about what is the return on investment? Of course and I understand that you're in an industry that's been sort of painted with a broad brush and what people think about is one example here in Southern California, with a specific university in Southern California that, for their learners, did not have much of an ROI. So what kind of programs are you supporting your university partners with? Give us some idea of what those programs are and how do your university partners you know? What does that partnership look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have over now with a combination of AP and Wiley University Services. We have over a hundred and 15 partners. We offer I mean, we serve universities that that we support over a hundred thousand students. So we have a pretty good sense of who that student is. They're mostly working adults Right In their thirties, a lot of first-generation students, and what they're looking for is an affordable experience that they think that they can succeed on and that will allow them to increase social mobility. It's worth their money and also allows you that feeling of achievement and improvement and so forth. A lot of them, as I said, are females in nursing, in teaching and education, people in business. We're seeing more and more undergrad but working adult undergrad. So think about people that started an undergrad and didn't finish it and now they're looking for an online option that's affordable to finish that undergrad and improve their career. And what we really focus on is we want to partner with schools that we can help, that our expertise, our capital, our experience, our retention, enrollment, marketing capabilities are useful for them and what we think the product is ultimately a really good product and for us, graduation rates and retention rates are very important, but ROI and outcomes is the ultimate measure. And I think you're right.
Speaker 2:There is a bit of a crisis of confidence. But when people talk about the crisis of confidence they don't segment the different populations. I mean, everybody thinks of the. I was looking yesterday that in some of the Northeast schools the average yearly tuition is up to $90,000 per year for an undergrad. That's crazy. I mean, it's a big number. Our average tuition for the entire program is $15,000 and you pay it in a year after you graduate, with just your increasing salary. So we're talking about very different populations and very different needs. We are very focused on what we believe is a great product that our partners offer and our job is to increase access and to help people to get those outcomes and get that ROI.
Speaker 1:So how did AP get started? What were those first partnerships like and how do your university partners find you?
Speaker 2:It's a company that's been around for call it 15 or so years and it was always focused on. It started with regional public universities, many of which are still customers, and that's a testament to the value add and to the relationship, and then it started growing over time. But what I think is very valuable is that it always stayed true to its mission. This idea of regional education really matters. Affordability really matters. Workforce-focused areas really matter. It never deviated from it and then the way our customers find us is a lot of it is through referrals.
Speaker 2:As you know, higher education there's a lot of changes in leadership between schools, so there's a lot of people that know us and then go to different schools, et cetera, and then usual events and things. What most people don't know and this is something that always surprised people that don't spend time thinking about regional universities is that the degree of online penetration on regional universities is actually fairly low. It's around 30 to 40 percent. So there's a lot of room for a lot of these schools that need to move online because their students are demanding it, but they haven't done it yet. And when people think, oh, it's a completely saturated market, that's because most people think about tier ones. They think about the top 50 schools, et cetera, which they've been around for a long time online, but we signed a partner recently that has many thousands of students in campus and has not launched online.
Speaker 2:We think there's a ton of pent-up demand. We think there's a lot of not only online growth that we see in the latest data of 9% online growth, not only online growth that we see in the latest data of 9% online growth. But there's a lot of people that want to do online programs in universities they know and recognize and it's attached to their local communities, but are not able to because the schools don't offer it yet. Right, and that's where we come in.
Speaker 1:We help those schools reach those students. As I hear you talking, I think, of two examples that I'm very familiar with the California State University system and the University of Massachusetts system. University of Massachusetts system because I was very familiar with Brandman University. Umass acquired Brandman changed the name to UMass Global and the reason was they needed to build an online presence. They wanted to reach more learners and in that example, they wanted to acquire that skill set, that core competency.
Speaker 1:And in the California State University system, of course, they need to increase their online presence and these are capacities that just don't exist in some of these four-year regionals. They're not as well-funded. So I can certainly see the demand, the need, and particularly in this marketplace where more and more there is a need to push into a demographic of learner that is not coming on campus, that they're working. So I would imagine those are the kinds of clients that you're finding. Those are the kinds of four-year regionals that you're interested in, because, given the decline in enrollment in K-12, given the demand for workforce skills, this has got to be a population that many four-year regionals have to expand into.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's part of it, but the other part of it is that it's in their mandate. I mean, you have a population that needs to be re-skilled, you have crises, I think, in shortage of nurses. That's the mandate. The mandate is for these schools is to deliver on that social mobility, on that access, on that affordability. So that's where we think we are very helpful.
Speaker 2:The thing that's very interesting about the population is that most of these students, when they apply to school, they only apply to one or two schools and they always prefer schools they know. So there's a local relationship. That's very important, right? So there's a lot of students that if the school I know doesn't offer online, it's not like I'm going to go and sign up to a different one, I might just forego. It's not like I'm going to go and sign up to a different one, I might just forego. So it becomes a loss to the system, if you will. It's not just a loss to the revenue or the opportunity for the university. It's actually that some of those students might not do the upskilling, might not get the degree they need to get, et cetera, to advance their careers. So access is this idea that if I don't do it, someone else will do it. It doesn't really work like that.
Speaker 2:So I think there's a lot of talk about the debt crisis. I think the shortage crisis and the access crisis also need to be combined during that conversation, as well as the confidence one that you mentioned.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned that you recently acquired Wiley. What does this acquisition do for academic partnerships and how does it benefit your learners?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, as I said, we fundamentally believe that this is a growing market and that online needs to grow and that there's a lot of schools that need help. And what we liked about bringing together AP and Wiley was that scale matters in this market. So there is more and more required investment in technology, in infrastructure, in new capabilities. So that's what this allows us to do is to bring scale, and that, for our university partners, basically means more resources that we can invest better, more efficiency and effectiveness that we can pass on to them.
Speaker 2:And we're trying to create advantages of being part of a network as well. So we have 115 universities. So, for example, when we start talking to employers that have needs of reskilling or upskilling across the US, saying like, look, we can help you because we have a network that everybody can get someone to help upscale in Chicago Much harder to do it in Southeast Oklahoma or in Arkansas or in many other places where we have this relationship with partners. So that's the other part of scale that we're very excited about, and we're starting to spend more time thinking about how do we work in that connection with employers and universities and we can bring our scale. So that was the idea of the acquisition. What will not change is what we focus on, which is this idea of workforce, relevant, high quality, high ROI programs, because that's the essence of what we're good at and what we think we bring to the picture.
Speaker 1:So if I'm a learner and I'm accessing an online program through my regional university that academic partnerships manages, what would I expect to see? What is that experience like?
Speaker 2:The experience is you probably initiated some sort of action. You're interested. You either went to Google, you went to a hospital. In the hospital we have people that go there and organize talks for nurses that want to upskill and get the next degree. So you probably initiated some sort of action, or skip you will.
Speaker 2:And you said look, I'm interested in Arkansas State MBA. Then we said, okay, if you're interested, why don't you fill out a form? You fill out the form and then someone calls you and explains the program, and explains what are the requirements, what the program is about, what are the needs, and helps you through that decision process and it's a long process. I mean this is a very important decision for students. So from when you fill a lead form to when you enroll, it might be eight months, a year of discussing, understanding, comparison, shopping, making sure your life is alive, et cetera. So once that happens and you're ready to go, we actually just pass you to the university and your learning relationship, your teachers, your pedagogy, your experience is all done by the university. What we then add is a layer of student support, and not academic support, but more the usual support that happens between semesters or I don't know how to do this or more of that student support to help on retention as much as we can. So that's the experience.
Speaker 2:So most of most students, their, their main connection is with someone until they enroll is with someone that that is working on behalf of the university with us, and then, once they enroll, their main relationship is with the university, which is the way it should be. So that's that's what you should experience as a student. If we get it right, there's an 80 plus percent chance you will graduate. You pay back within 1.2 years and you continue to increase your salary, because the other thing we found is that it's not just the first time salary increase of 15,000, but after three years it's more like $30,000. So you continue to increase your salary. So that's the experience.
Speaker 1:Fernando, let's talk about the marketplace, the OPM marketplace, which you're part of, and I think the work that you're doing is providing transparency, leadership in this marketplace. But there's still a lot of confusion about the marketplace. I was with a good friend of mine who happens to work in the White House and we were talking about OPMs and, of course, you hear concerns like runaway costs of marketing. You hear concerns about the learner experience. You know who owns the learner experience. Is it the university, is it the OPM? You hear words like predatory practices. How do you respond to those concerns or some of the confusion that still exists about what an OPM, like academic partnerships, really does?
Speaker 2:I think it's a great question, eloy, and the funny thing is, if you ask presidents of universities we work with, or provosts, I mean, recently the department had those open forums and a lot of presidents of universities, a lot of universities came and said this is why we need academic partnerships and this is why we see the value. So I think there's more confusion outside our partners than it is that they are within our partners. If you talk to existing partners or potential partners, they get it. They get what we bring to the picture, what they bring to the picture where we draw those lines. I think there's more confusion outside than inside. That's the first thing I would say. The second thing I would say is that I fundamentally believe that the product that our partners are offering is a great product, based on the ROI and all the things we've talked about, and that our job is to help with access to that product.
Speaker 2:So this idea of like you're spending too much on marketing, or a president said it best and he was at the White House and he said to, I think, to the undersecretary. He said measure my outputs, don't measure my throughputs Like. Measure my financial transparency scores, measure my graduation rates, measure my debt, measure my income but don't measure how much I spent on marketing or how much I spent on faculty or how much I spent. That's a throughput question and I think the department is focused on the right things and I think this idea of financial transparency, this idea of access, this idea of affordability, they're all the right things and they're putting the right tools to measure them. So my view is let's have the conversations around that, let's have the debate, the conversations around that. So it's hard to respond to a conceptual, predatory pricing thing.
Speaker 2:If I say, look, 80% of students graduate, they pay for their 55%, don't take any debt. The rest take $6,000. They pay for it in 1.2 years. 85% say they're super happy. So my job if you have a great product and you think it creates social mobility, it's affordable, it creates our own.
Speaker 2:I think there's an imperative to increase access as much as possible. And working adults that can benefit from this program don't sign up by themselves. This is not an undergrad that knew he was going. These are nurses that have kids, are working shifts, don't know if they can achieve it. So the process of reaching out to them, the process of explaining the program, the process of supporting them through it, is actually really valuable program. The process of supporting them through it is actually really valuable. And if you have 3 million coming shortage of nurses and millions of shortage of coming students, there is an imperative of teachers. There is an imperative to say can we get more nurses? Can we get more teachers? So my view is, as long as the products are good and the ROI is there, then we should have that conversation and we should put measures and we should. And, by the way, this doesn't matter if it's online, if it's offline, if it's with an OPM, if it's not with an OPM measure every program which is where we're going.
Speaker 2:Look at the debt-to-earnings ratio and all these metrics and then, if a program is great, go for it and get as many potential people as you can and improve their life. Otherwise it becomes a little bit of an elitist argument. Only the people that know about education, that can have presence of mind education and have the time should go and do education. So I think access is really important. So that's how I think about the conversation.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great point, and certainly those of us who interact in the marketplace. We see the worst examples of some of these industry actors. We see the worst examples when online education first started. We've seen the examples of predatory practices of institutions that shut down overnight and leave their students hanging. Shut down overnight and leave their students hanging. We've seen the examples of a particular OPM that was very much out on the bleeding edge talking about their services and that tends to occupy the imagination of the people watching the marketplace, when in fact there are a lot of organizations like yourselves who are just working day to day to create that access.
Speaker 1:So I appreciate the challenges you face in breaking through some of that, but I think, as you mentioned, the key is the outcomes continuing to be transparent about how you work, continuing to be transparent about the outcomes and continuing to have real, genuine partnerships with your college and university partners. So let me ask you this the proposed changes that the Department of Education was proposing to the definition of a third-party servicer, potential changes to the bundled services exception in the Dear Colleague letter that created the opportunity for a lot of these partnerships to exist. It's been a year now. Nothing has happened yet. The department is still wrestling with those potential changes. But given what you've heard about some of those changes, how do you think it would affect your relationship with your university partners and the OPM marketplace in general?
Speaker 2:I think, first and foremost I would say is that I think what the department is trying to achieve in terms of reducing and I listened to your podcast with both the secretary and the under secretary and I'm very aligned, and we have very good conversation with the department of what they're trying to achieve in terms of reducing debts, increasing access, financial transparency All of that makes a lot of sense to me and it works very aligned to who we are and what we do as AP and the partners we work with. I mean the moment that there's clear metrics of ROI that have to be reported and that students see that I'm very excited for that for our business, because people will see, oh, look at these schools and look at those ROIs, and so for me, I think the department is trying to do really good things. I think the complexity is that sometimes and you've lived through this there's a lot of unintended consequences of actions, and I think someone mentioned this idea of scalpel versus whatever axis or whatever it's called. The tricky part for me is how the department makes sure that it enforces those ideas that it wants and that it protects consumers which it should in a way that doesn't create unintended consequences, and one of the ones the unintended consequences that I worry the most about is that the type of schools we work with do not have the capital or the expertise to pay a vendor in a fee-for-service model and because you need to have the money in your budget and you need to have the capital, and so forth. And when we try to offer fee-for-service for some of our partner schools, they say no, we don't want that. We like the model where you're accountable for the persistence of the student and then you make money when the student succeeds, versus which you just charge us marketing fees. And we can't afford to pay marketing fees. So we want to compete, so we want to compete. So the department has this difficult thing to solve, which is the desire to protect students, but also the desire to support regional public universities, and you need to find a way to reconcile those two.
Speaker 2:The legislation for potential changes around third-party services. I think it makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense because it creates some transparency, some accountability. We've quasi-operated with the assumption that it should happen. It will happen at some point. So for us it's good to do it, but it's not a big change. We follow a lot of those practices. We do a lot of those things. So I don't think that's a big change On the change of a potential model, because, at the end of the day, this idea of the bundle services guidance and rev, sure versus fee for service, the product is needed and the product is good Meaning.
Speaker 2:Schools will need support with capital. They will need support with change management, with marketing, with enrollment, with retention. They need those services. So now you're just talking about how you contract. What's what's the fee model? Right, it's like the old ad versus subscription model. So I think it's a, it's a, it's a dialogue. That my my view is that we should just be thoughtful of the unintended consequences, but we can operate with whatever the department thinks it makes the most sense. So I just want clarity, you know, like for me, like, let's just decide what's the best option and let's just go and let's offer great programs to students and let's deliver great outcomes and let's measure those and and that's what I'm focused on- Well, I think all of us are hoping that the department can add some clarity soon.
Speaker 1:Like anything else, I think, every time that they get close, some other major issue takes their time and attention. So, given where they're at with FAFSA right now, hopefully they'll get that behind them soon and provide clarity on this whole issue. Now, as we begin to wrap up, let me ask you this If people listening to this podcast, watching this podcast, want to get more information about academic partnerships or some of the data that you talked about the Ipsos study that you mentioned, get more information about the data that you talked about, the Ipsos study that you mentioned. Get more information about the outcomes that you talked about.
Speaker 2:What is the best way for folks to access that information? Yeah, so we publish what we call an impact report and we share all that data. It's in our website and if you Google academic partnerships impact report, you get it. And if you go to the website, we make it very clear We've I mean, we're very open with the data. We're actually very proud of it, Not for ourselves, but on behalf of our partners, because this is all about our partners and what they do. So that's the best way and it's all. And that's why we also use a third party like Ipsos, because I think it's their methodology, it's their way of looking at the results.
Speaker 2:We're launching it as an annual thing. So now we're adding more partners and continuing to launch it, and we will continue to publish our impact report every year.
Speaker 1:Great Well, listen, fernando. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on to the podcast. It's refreshing to hear the way that you're approaching the work, the way you're approaching the partnerships, the way that you lift your partners as being, obviously, the main provider of the education, of the opportunity to the learners. I think that is refreshing and it's refreshing to hear you talk about outcomes. So appreciate you taking the time to join us on the podcast today, fernando.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Gilles. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, thanks everybody for joining us here on the RAND podcast. You've been listening to my conversation with Fernando Blechmar he is the head of academic partnerships and we've been talking about the online program management marketplace and the work that they do to lead that marketplace. So love your thoughts about what you think about the podcast, the interview, the OPM marketplace and also any thoughts you have on where the Department of Education should go on some of these regulatory issues that they're still wrestling with. So thanks for joining us here on the podcast. Hit, subscribe, continue to follow us on this YouTube channel and continue to follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for joining us, everybody, and we will be back with you real soon.
