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
Engaging Lost Learners with Terah Crews, CEO of ReUP Education
Unlock the full potential within the millions of Americans who have stepped away from higher education. Join the conversation with Tara Crews, the CEO of ReUp Education, as we dissect the multifaceted hurdles that keep 41 million working learners from completing their degrees. This episode isn't just about understanding the barriers; it's about forging pathways to reengagement and success. We're peeling back the layers of financial strain, time poverty, and the longing for a sense of belonging to reveal how these factors intertwine, creating a complex challenge for students, institutions, and policymakers alike.
Our candid talk traverses from the personal plights of individuals to the sweeping implications for state economies, inviting you to consider how re-educating learners ripples out to benefit families and communities. With a spotlight on the innovative strategies like New Jersey's centralized support system, we scrutinize the role of artificial intelligence in education, advocating for a delicate balance between technology and the irreplaceable human touch. Prepare to be enlightened on the transformative power of re-engaging learners, with insights that could reshape the landscape of higher education and the workforce.
Thank you.
Speaker 1:Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz-Oakley, and welcome back to the Rant, a 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 focus on re-engaging working learners who exited higher education and did not complete a degree or a credential. For a myriad of reasons, many learners have left higher education, whether they no longer believe in the value of higher education, or they're working, raising a family or just trying to make ends meet, working multiple jobs. These workers, these working learners, are essential to the new economy in cities and states throughout the country, in cities and states throughout the country. Joining me to talk about how to re-engage these lost learners is Tara Cruz, ceo of Re-Up Education. Tara is a pioneer in the some college no degree space and she and her team have been working hard to get this demographic of learner back into college and re-engage in the economy. So, with that backdrop, let me welcome Tara to the podcast. Tara, welcome to the Rant.
Speaker 2:Thanks, eli, happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Well, it's great to have you. Thanks for taking some time out of your busy schedule to be with us. This is the topic that a lot of people are talking about re-engaging working learners. Particularly since the pandemic, there's been a lot of consternation about enrollment decline, about the number of learners out there who have some college, no degree, trying to get them re-engaged. But before we get into that work, let me pause and just ask you to tell us a little bit about the history and the mission of REAP Education, and how has your organization's focus changed since you became the CEO?
Speaker 2:So REAP was founded about eight years ago and from its very founding it was focused in on this population and let's just like ground everybody a little bit on, like how big of a problem this really is. We have 41 million people with some college, no credential Wow, Put that into context. Like one in six adults in the US have some college and no credential. The problem is massive. In fact. Can you name any one example where there is one in six Americans who do not have an organization who advocates on their path through policies or through change, whatever?
Speaker 2:Rehabilitation Founding was focused in on that from the earliest beginnings. For the first six years, the organization really made great strides and spent every ounce of energy and effort they had in figuring out how we find these learners through partnerships with our colleges and universities. Engage them, find them wherever they are in the world, engage them, begin the conversation about what it would take to get them back when are they in their life, Build intent, help them get back into school and because knowing that most institutions are actually not great at supporting this population, continue to support them all the way until graduation. Somebody did that for a little over six years. I joined just a little over two years ago, and since that time we've really put the pedal all the way to the metal. Here we focused in on the schools that are struggling the most community colleges and Coria Regional Publics a little bit about and that is a segment that has allowed us to achieve scale that would have otherwise been not feasible even just a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned the number 41 million 41 million learners throughout this country who didn't finish their credential or their degree. 41 million learners who really can't reach their full potential in the economy. That's a staggering number. In your work, what are you finding are the reasons that these learners stop their education?
Speaker 2:I'll answer that question and I'll actually follow up with the question I want people to ask and I'll actually follow up with the question I want people to ask. Oftentimes, why people stomp down can vary wildly. If you just ask people right out of the gate, they'll say finances, but oftentimes when you do the digging, you find that it's a much more nuanced and complicated answer Finances, because you didn't get the financial aid. No, actually, I had some family issues and I had to take a step back and figure out how to support my family Finances because you were struggling to pay for your individual or dorm. No, actually, I was getting everything paid for, but I was working four or five jobs part time to try to get things paid for.
Speaker 2:If you ask people why they stopped out, you're almost always going to get the answer finances. And if you don't get the answer finances, it's going to be I didn't feel like I belonged, never find things, didn't know what I was studying, et cetera, et cetera. We often find it's less relevant why they stopped out. It's more relevant where are they today, first and foremost, and what is it that is preventing them from going back? We don't actually spend a ton of time talking about what went wrong. We acknowledge it, whatever happened.
Speaker 2:It was finances it was. You didn't feel like you belong. You never found your community. Whatever it is, let's talk about what's keeping you from going back today, and in that we essentially find three common themes, and they're all like anything here. This is a fundamentally human experience or a human decision that's intermingled with a lot of things.
Speaker 2:Why people don't come back Time poverty I just don't know how I fit this in my schedule. Number two cost, and oftentimes it's not just it's expensive. I don't know how to navigate the policies that are available and the programs that are available to help me afford this. Will I feel alone? Am I going to be the only 35 year old in that class of 18 year olds? Am I going to feel like I don't belong? Am I going to feel like more, like a failure because I went back and had not come back at all? So the short answer to your question is almost always people say finances, but there's a lot more in it. We don't actually focus that much on it. We focus in on okay, talk about where you are today in your life, and the big themes are time, poverty, cost and sense of belonging.
Speaker 1:I certainly resonate with what you just said. Having spent time well, having spent over 30 years in community colleges, you hear those stories a lot. You hear a lot of individuals who, for whatever reason, stopped going either right out of high school. I mean, I was one of those learners. I went into the army right out of high school. I didn't go into higher education until I was 24. And when I walked into those classrooms at 24, even though it was a community college, I felt like the old guy. I felt like you know, it took me quite some time. So I can see how that is such a challenge.
Speaker 1:And, to your point, focusing on where they are today, not why they left two, three, four, five years ago, I think is a great point. We spend way too much time worrying about why they left and not enough time worrying about why they need to come back and what they're thinking today. So I know in my experience and I know many people across the country saw this happening, certainly before the pandemic and after the pandemic we saw many working learners just walk away from their higher education institutions, whether it was because of the health effects, the job loss that occurred, the online-only options that were available during the pandemic and the lack of Wi-Fi in these families. How do you re-engage these learners? What are some of the things that you've learned to do there at?
Speaker 2:RE-EP.
Speaker 1:Education. And when you talk to them, what do you find they're looking for now?
Speaker 2:how do you re-engage is oftentimes the hardest part of this we like to simply say. We oftentimes say these learners are hard to find, they're hard to engage, they're hard to enroll, and that's why a lot of institutions and a lot of government now are just now beginning to focus some energy and effort on it, because it's been really difficult so but, that said, a few sort of secrets or under the hood.
Speaker 2:that's how we engage and, first off, we interact with them in whatever modality makes sense. And here's what that means. Once we've been able to find them and there's a whole lot of work that just goes behind the scenes and figuring out where they are, where they are, even in the country they may have moved anywhere where they are in life and what's their contact information Once we have all those basic elements in place, we focus on reaching out through multiple means of communication. Now, historically, higher education has taken the approach of well, I'm going to find you and I'm going to tell you to set up a call with an advisor and you're going to have to come to campus. If we're really old school and if we're really innovative, we might let you pick up the phone and talk to us. That's fine if you want to get only a tiny percentage of people back.
Speaker 2:What we find is, if you really want to engage them, you have to engage them where they are. And here's what that means in like simplest and simplest sense it's the working mom who is carrying on a meeting with one of our coaches and she is texting while she is preparing dinner for her kids. She is following up while she's cleaning up dishes with her kids, she's continuing that meeting before her kids, after her kids are going to bed, and she's picking it up the next morning. We're engaging a larger population of people because we are meeting them where they are in line and communicating with them and carrying on asynchronous meetings with them in a way that is, let's be honest, this is how we do everything else in our life.
Speaker 2:Right, I can't tell you. The last time I like carried on a whole phone conversation with one of my family members, but man, I've already got 30 texts today from a group chat in my family. So that's just one example. But we have coaches that are there that are ready to jump on the phone and ready to talk through things. We're carrying on meetings asynchronously to interact with the coach and increasingly we're bringing new technology to bear that allows the learners to navigate resources not just through our messaging and our human coaching, but also through technology.
Speaker 1:When you engage them and you start talking about reengaging in higher education, what do they tell you they're looking for?
Speaker 2:Oftentimes it boils down to really two things. I want a better place in life, Like I want to be more financially secure.
Speaker 2:These are workforce and financially minded people. I don't know that we've had a single person come back who is purely studying for the purpose of education alone. That doesn't mean that they don't care, but that's not what they say first and foremost. So how is this going to improve my life? How is this going to improve my better job?
Speaker 2:Interestingly enough, though almost equally common, I want to be a good example for somebody in my life. Oftentimes it's my kids, but those are the two primary motivators. I want to be a good sample example for them. I want them to have a better life and I want greater, greater security for myself, either in just job security or financial security, and we we really lean into working with people on that and encourage people to actually keep that as their North Star, because you know this isn't something that you get immediate gratification on. Going back to school is a long journey and we try to actually identify whatever that North Star is for that learner and then remind them of that and pull them back to that every time things get hard, because, let's be honest, it's going to get hard.
Speaker 1:Right? No, it's going to get hard, Right? No, it's going to get hard. You mentioned that governments local governments, state governments, and there's even been talk at the national level about this demographic of learner. When you talk to officials in government, whether local policymakers or state policymakers, how do they think about that lost investment? Because at 41 million learners with some college, no degree, that's a lot of public dollars that went into their education and they're getting very little back on that return on investment. So how do you engage these leaders and talk to them about that lost investment?
Speaker 2:So, first off, I've yet to meet one who actually understands it as a lost investment. It's one of the first things we say. An average state looms $200 million to $300 million a year in subsidies for people who will quit in that given year, and our team is actually working on more and more sophisticated ways to calculate this loss of investment. One of the first things I say when I'm sitting down with the legislator or governor's office whatever is I, I I named that number for them for their individual state, and usually I get a little bit of like a sit back in the chair, cross the arms of oh wow.
Speaker 2:So, first off, many of them don't think about that and we're trying to do that advocacy work now um, because I think there hasn't been enough government intervention, because they don't understand the scope and scale of the problem at the state level. That's enough. I think we pretty quickly try to help them go from risk to opportunity. Yes, you've lost a lot of investment in this population of learners. Yes, this learner learners by and large tend to be Pell eligible, which is a good indicator of the poverty level, and about 50% of what we see is in that Pell eligible break. But let's talk about the opportunity. These are not risk. This is net opportunity for them, those learners, and for you and your state.
Speaker 2:These are people who are part of the way there. You've got workforce gaps Community college they may be six to nine months away from getting a degree that can help fill those workforce gaps. You've got tax shortages in your state. These people are anywhere from six to 12 months away from having a better wage and paying higher taxes. You're worried about people in your state who are struggling to make it mine. You get the pattern here.
Speaker 2:So, oftentimes we're doing the advocacy work because there isn't that organization that goes out and advocates on their behalf. Our first conversations are you have significant lost investment here, but that also represents a fast path to positive ROI in terms of impact on lives, impact on state coffers, impact on workforce, and that's a net opportunity for you overall.
Speaker 1:That is such an important conversation. In my day job at College Futures Foundation, we're launching into a return on investment survey of all 292 public private institutions here in California and the ROI is very dependent on completion. Institutions that have a lot of learners with some college, no degree that didn't finish, that ROI is just not the same. So on multiple levels, this lack of credential, this lack of completion, is hurting the return on investment, not only for states, but for institutions and for learners and their families themselves.
Speaker 1:So I think it's such an important piece that I hope our policymakers spend much more time, because it is a huge loss of economic value for our country. So you mentioned previously technology and the use of technology in reengaging learners. I know that you rely on technology to stay engaged with these learners that you're serving. How do you see the impact of AI affecting the way that you support the learners that you're engaged with?
Speaker 2:there's a lot of opportunities with AI, and this is where I'll get on my soapbox for a minute. I think we've got there's a few things. First is I think we're in a little bit of an AI hysteria right now that everybody thinks AI is going to absolutely solve all problems, and it's true, it can be enormously beneficial, or it can be incredibly beneficial, but at the same time, I think there's a couple things that I I watch out and then I'm going to talk.
Speaker 2:I'm talking about a couple watch outs and a couple areas where I see opportunity first is look, we have 10 million natural language recorded interactions with learners and we know which ones led to positive results enrollment and and In some ways we are like primed to make use of some of the AI and we've done some testing on it. It is not so far along that it can navigate highly nuanced regulatory and ethical conversation At least we're not seeing it yet these complex decisions. We need to be careful about what we tell learners. We need to always give them agency, always give them choice, not make false promises. And anybody who is working to use ai as like a hammer to solve this. I would caution that these are people that we're interacting with and we. Ai is not. It's not smart enough to do it yet. Here's the future. It might be.
Speaker 2:Second people we're seeing that our learners want to have more ways to interact with technology, that when you need a human, you need a human, and when we want a human, we want a human.
Speaker 2:So one of the reverse conversations and watchouts with AI is that we end up losing people along the way who just want to talk to someone. They just need somebody to help. In fact, in an AI world, human contact carries me to a bigger premium. This is what I even tell my own internal people or my own internal team. This is why I even tell my own internal people or my own internal team, if you have any type of premium status on an airline, you highly value that ability to pick up a phone and talk to somebody and not wait on the wait line for 20 or 30 minutes. That's right. Everybody should have that for navigating their education journey. Everybody should be able to pick up a phone and navigate through. If you're lucky enough to buy a house, this is the second biggest investment you'll make in your life and there's no real estate broker or there's no mortgage broker or there's no all these things.
Speaker 2:Everybody deserves a real human when they need it to answer their questions and help them navigate processes. So high level on AI, it's not there yet to be able to just like hammer, solve a problem and anybody who's trying to deploy it careful. Second, in an AI world, humans are becoming even more valuable in terms of like those real connection moments.
Speaker 2:That said, look, we're using AI adversity every part of the business. Right now. We're looking for those first few messages that interact with learners. We know that some machine learning generated responses can speed up connection speed to responding. Those first messages are really important. That's where AI is like, really beneficial.
Speaker 2:We know that a lot of our learners come to us with very nuanced questions about trying to navigate specific policies and things at an institution. We built a massive knowledge management system for every single institution we have and we're deploying AI to help our coaches and help our technology be able to find answers for them very quickly. Third, we're constantly looking for new ways to engage new people, new populations within our database, and AI has actually been very helpful in helping us find new messaging and test new messaging much quicker than what we would have done in the past. So I think people are a little overblown on how fast AI is going to change education, but there's a ton of intermediates, oftentimes unsexy applications, that are moving the needle for us internally some similarities and some differences that you find state by state in how these disengaged learners, these lost learners, are showing up.
Speaker 2:There's actually far more similarities than differences. In fact, I think generally what we find is with this population of learners, whether they're living in New Jersey, they're in Massachusetts or they're in Michigan, they're in North Carolina, they're in Texas, they're all Michigan, they're in North Carolina, they're in Texas, they're all in a sort of they're all kind of commonality in how they're approaching the conversation.
Speaker 2:Most of them are actively employed today. People who aren't employed are focused on more base level needs and usually aren't starting the conversation with us. They are employed today. They likely had significant wage gain during pandemic.
Speaker 2:And for a moment they didn't think about education, because they just saw such an improvement in how much money was coming in the door and their bank accounts maybe were the largest they'd ever been in their life. That for a moment they didn't. But now they're starting to feel the pain right again and they're really starting to come back to okay, I can't have that hourly job at making burritos. I'm going to have to and need to find a pathway to something, something better and something more sustainable.
Speaker 2:That said, like with most of our society right now, there's some skepticism of higher education. I find that there is less with this population than the population as a whole. These are oftentimes people who see the difference between the person at their job who has the bachelor's degree or has the associate's degree or has the associate's degree, and themselves. That is not like that. That's very obvious to them. So when you're talking about you know when you're talking to a group of people who maybe were less motivated during pandemic but are now getting more motivated, now they see the value. They may question higher education, like in general's value, but they know the value of that credential and opening up that next job and that better um and that better pay, the other.
Speaker 2:The other common thing I would say, though, beyond just like behavior and characteristics, is and this is especially important for policymakers they're still where they started. 91 to 95% of them are still in state. So for policymakers who are thinking about dollar for dollar impact, roi and are worried about brain drain and investing all this money in these people who go here and go somewhere else to actually make a living, this population has roots. This population stayed even without the better job and they're pretty well rooted into their community. So an investment in there is a much better investment in your state than maybe you might be used to or questioning as a policymaker.
Speaker 1:So, as we begin to wrap up, let me ask you this two-part question. So, as we begin to wrap up, let me ask you this two-part question. Based on what you've seen going on around the country, what would you tell policymakers? Is good policy to re-engage these learners? Is there something that you've seen in one of the states that you're working in that you think really is lifting up this population of learners? Really is lifting up this population of learners? And then my last question would be if you run into a learner on the street who's trying to re-engage in higher education, what advice do you have for them?
Speaker 2:For the state policy. It's simple. The reason we aren't making better traction on this population is that, for most schools, they don't have the resources to support them and they are not incentivized to support this population is that, for most schools, they don't have the resources to support them and they are not incentivized to support this population. In fact, if you were to get some of the best policy out there for individual institutions doing this work and you were to really narrow that in, it would mean only serving around 6% to 7% of the entire 41 million. The way to do this if you're a state policymaker is you need to centralize the data and centralize the population learner into one system within your state. In the case of new jersey new jersey, we know, has about 700 000 some college now credential we now have a centralized database of 220 000 of of those New Jerseyans. We have their contact information, we have their zip code and we are outreaching them and we are getting them back to not just the original school but any school in the state. That only works if you have a central system and the individual schools are not doing the work themselves, because if they do the work themselves, they're only going to benefit themselves are not doing the work themselves, because if they do the work themselves, they're only going to benefit themselves. Anything disparaging to these individual schools, it's just practical of how they have to run an operation. You centralize it in the state. Nobody cares where they actually end up going, because everybody ends up benefiting. You want to make an impact, centralize this within your state.
Speaker 2:In terms of advice on the street it's interesting you asked this I ran into two people recently One with my hairdresser who actually went to a school that we work with. The other person was at my local hardware store and was mixing the paint that I was using to paint my office and I'm not at today. I gave two pieces of advice to different different To my hairdresser. I asked her if she was happy. I asked her why she quit. I just said well, you're sitting there cutting my hair. I was just trying to understand why she wasn't life. She felt like she's in a really good place in life. She loves what she's doing. She went back and got a different credential. She makes a good living. He's where she's going to. My advice to her was that's awesome, like it'd be with no events, and it was to say hey, we work with your school. If you ever change your mind, we're here to support you.
Speaker 2:It's important that not all some people have found a pen absent education and that's okay. And for my person who was mixing and paint him and I actually talked for about 15, 20 minutes he's struggling. He went to a public university. He went to a community college. Many years later.
Speaker 2:For him the challenge was as an adult, and now an adult in his forties, he was having a hard time navigating the complexity of higher education. My advice to him was you've got to find someone on campus who can help you navigate the system. You've been out for a while. It's complicated, let's just be honest. It's complicated to go higher education, especially when you're older and you've been out for some time. Finding that person who can navigate those systems it's going to be critical. In his case we didn't actually work with that individual school, but I actually connected him to the advising on campus and say they're not oriented quite in the same way of coaches, but they are still there to support you. Before you ever go back and just sort of throw yourself back in, make sure you have a support system around you, somebody on campus and somebody in your life, who can support you and encourage you when things get hard, because inevitably they do.
Speaker 1:They certainly do. And with that great piece of advice for learners all across this country looking to improve their lives, looking to get back into higher education, I want to say thanks, tara, for joining us here on the rant. I really appreciate the work that you're engaged in. I hope many people hear your message. Many state leaders hear your message. We really do need to re-engage those 41 million learners, not just for the sake of their current situation, but for the sake of their families going forward, for the sake of the debt that they might be carrying. So, for all those reasons and the economies of their communities, their cities, their states, this is a really important issue.
Speaker 1:So thanks for being with us here on the Rant. Thank you, ami All right. Thanks everybody for joining us here on the Rant. Thank you, ami All right. Thanks everybody for joining us here on the Rant. I've been talking with Derek Cruz, ceo of ReUp Education, and ReUp Education is a supporter of the Rant podcast, so very, very thankful to ReUp Education for their support. If you enjoyed this episode, hit the like button, continue to follow us on this YouTube channel or follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for joining us everybody.
Speaker 2:And we'll see you again soon.
