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
Designing for the Anders at National University with Mark Milliron
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Most higher ed systems still treat the “typical” student like someone with a wide-open schedule and a campus life built around them. That assumption falls apart the moment you meet a working parent, a service member with deployment orders, or a community college transfer juggling rent, kids, and a job while trying to move up.
I’m joined by Dr. Mark Milliron, president of National University, to talk about what it looks like to design for those learners on purpose. Mark calls them “Anders” because they are students and employees, students and parents, students and deployed. We get into National University’s Navy-rooted history, why short four- and eight-week courses can lower cognitive load, and how program design, student support, and real-world experiences have to work together if we want adult learners to finish strong and see real economic mobility.
We also dig into affordability and access: tuition strategy, scholarships, emergency aid, and a clear pathway for community college transfers, including how Pell-eligible ADT students can see tuition effectively covered. Then we go head-on at AI in higher education, including National’s cross-functional AI council, the “about, with, and beyond” learning framework, and Raise Five, a simple rubric that makes AI expectations clear for every assignment while pushing faculty to rethink what learning should look like now.
If you care about working learners, military-connected students, and practical innovation that keeps humans at the center, you’ll take a lot from this conversation. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review with the one change you think colleges should make first.
www.nu.edu
eloy@4leggedmedia.com
Welcome And Why Working Learners
Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz Oakley, and welcome back to another episode of the "Rant" podcast. 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're talking about working learners again, and this time with the president of National University, President Mark Milliron. Mark has been in and around higher education for a long time spending time at the Gates Foundation, working at Civitas, Western Governors University, and of course, now National University. National University's home is here in California, down in San Diego, and it grew up around the Navy. So we'll talk to Mark about the history of National University, where it's been and where it's going, and what National University's learners look like today. I'll also talk to Mark about intentional design, intentional instructional design for working learners. National is a leading voice in designing around working learners, and now is such an important time to be focused on this issue. Given the challenges that some universities face with enrollment, there is a plethora of enrollment opportunities if universities and colleges can reach more working learners, and that will be a driver of today's conversation. And I'll also hear from Mark describe his students, and particularly the Anders. I won't give you too much more detail. I'll let Mark talk about the Anders, but it's an interesting twist on what working learners need today and how National University is focused on ensuring that they design around the needs of working learners. So with that backdrop, please
National University Origins And Anders
enjoy my conversation with Dr. Mark Milliron, president of National University.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104Mark, welcome to "The Rant" podcast.
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104Eloy, glad to be here.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104It's great to have you. Thanks for taking the time. I know you've got a million things going on in your world, in the world of National University, so let's jump right in. first and foremost tell us how you're doing, and tell us a little bit about the history of National University.
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104Yeah, I'm doing great. We just came off our commencement ceremonies. We had Ted Mitchell from ACE as our commencement speaker, along with Darshana Patel, who's one of our kind of rockstar legislators here in California. They were just amazing. 6,800 graduates unbelievable stories of all different kinds of backgrounds. And just to kinda get to your question about national, what's so great about our commencements is it is basically like America walking across the stage. We serve about 130,000 students a year, 50,000 degree-seeking, about 80,000 in non-credit workforce training. We're probably two-thirds graduate between doctoral and master's programs, law school and then about a third in the undergraduate side. The commencements are just so interesting because, the youngest grad will be this year was 20, the most seasoned was 79. We're 70% diverse. We are every age and stage. And, we call our students anders because their primary identity is not just as a student. They are a student and a parent, student and employed, student and deployed. And those ands, it's a really big deal because they don't just have a primary identity and some other things, because if you make them choose between the other identities, you're gonna lose, and education's gonna lose. And so the most important thing is designing for that and. So we, we have from day one, back in 1971, we were-- we, we began with that ander in mind. Dr. David Schigos he was a well-known professor of higher education, former Navy captain who was just totally heartbroken watching service members coming back from Vietnam, trying to use their GI Bill and getting savaged by traditional education. It just wasn't built for them. And it wasn't because he didn't care about them. It was because it just was not built for them. He said, "There's gotta be a model of education that'll work, super high quality-" But designed for nontraditional working and military students. And that's where we began. Crazy idea back in 1971, and you fast-forward 55 years later, one of the largest nonprofit private universities in the country. But we are still 100% nontraditional working military. Half our students are parents, half our undergrads are active duty veteran, spouse, dependent, and almost 100% of our students work while they go to school. So we we know who we serve, and we do really-- we work really hard to serve them well.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104That's great to hear. And I know in my conversations previously with President Fowler over at the University of Maryland Global Campus, they definitely
Navy Roots And One-Class Model
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104also have a history in the military. Tell us about your history with the military. I'm sure it began I would assume, because of your location there in San Diego, but tell us a little bit about the
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104Yeah. Greg and I often joke about the fact that he is to the Army what we are to the Navy. They were a child of need coming out of World War II. We were a child of need coming out of the Vietnam War. And Dr. David Chigos, again, was a Navy captain, hugely connected. In fact, all of our-- at least ten of our original kind of founding team were all former officers. And so the whole design principle was make sure that this was-- which this would work for service members and and for the GIs that were coming back. And so a good example, we are-- One of the things we are really known for is we've designed our model where at the doctoral level, it's a one-to-one Oxford model, and which is super flexible for those kind of working students. And our undergrads, we've built it on a four- and eight-week model, especially the four-week model. And the idea between the four-week class model is that a-- somebody working full-time, raising kids, whatever it might be, the cognitive load is just too high to take four and five classes over sixteen weeks. It's too much stuff in addition to kids and working full time. But doing one class at a time makes perfect sense, and you can complete almost the equivalent of doing it one-month courses, and you're only focusing on one thing at a time as you're doing it. By the way, every university in the country does it, called summer classes, right? It's the same kind of thing. So we just do it all the time, and what we've found is for our student population, if the instructional design is created in such a way where they don't have to relearn how to navigate and you can just focus on the learning, that can work really well at a super high level. And our students achieve like crazy. We're in the ninety-fifth percentile for CSAT. We have a eighty-four percent, First time pass rate for our law school students. Our students rock when they get out. And what you find is that these models that are specifically designed for this student population can be wildly successful. And boy it's amazing how well our students love this kind of model for them. And the other neat thing for the service members, going back to your question is, if, most of them have 30-day deployment orders. So that means if they get a deployment order, they can finish their course before they get deployed, and then they can come back in whenever it's time for them to come back in.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104I just think back to my time in the military, and I'm wondering where-- why I couldn't find National or a UMGC back then. It would've been-- It would've saved me a whole lot of time and money once I got back. let me ask you this. Obviously you serve a lot of people in the military. You are known for serving working learners, as you mentioned.
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104And community college partners. There are-- 80% of our undergrads come from community colleges.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104That's great. So tell us a little bit about the kind of programs of study you would find at National. Is it comprehensive, or is it focused on a handful of of types of programs?
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104Yeah, I would argue we probably have the most comprehensive set of offerings for the non-traditional working military student Bar none. I've never seen a university that has expansive a programming as we have. We're probably best known, obviously, in California for our College of Education. Our College of Ed is the number one provider of teachers in the state and education leaders across the board. So it's everything from doctorates all the way down to initial teaching degrees. Really strong in special ed, really strong in, applied behavioral analysis. Great law school criminal justice program. Again, very focused on the non-traditional student population in particular. Great health college best known for its DNAP program and for its for its nursing program in particular. We have a really interesting kind of mashup. We blended
Programs Built For Real Careers
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104our College of Business and our Engineering and Technology school into one called CoBett, mainly 'cause those programs now totally overlap, and so there's so much intersectionality between that. That program is probably best known for, the classic MBAs and DBAs, but the number one set of programs are the cybersecurity programs and the data science and AI programs. We work with MIT and Berkeley and others on large scale projects in AI, but our cybersecurity program, we are a national center of excellence for cybersecurity at the bachelor's, master's, and doctoral level. We work directly with the NSA. 80% of the students in that program are military. It is a great kind of crosswalk for that. We also have a great School of Arts, Letters, and Sciences. Fantastic creative writing program, lots of folks going into screenwriting but also just the basic kind of biology and the other kinds of programs that are coming out of that. A- again, what's really nice about, our university is the fact that you've got such a diverse array. our JFK School of Psychology and Social Sciences, by the way, we probably produce the most diverse therapists of anybody, any university in the country. Our PsyD program, Doctor of Marriage and Family Therapy, all the way down to our beginning, Bachelor's of Psychology programming and our social work is just powerful. Major difference makers, and literally tens of thousands of hours of community service work that we're doing with our mental health counselors. We have, in addition to our programs, because of the hybrid work, we're online, hybrid, and on ground, we have about 5,000 clinical sites all around the country, whether it's with school districts, we partner with close to 3,000 school districts but then you've got hospitals, you've got mental health clinics, you've got cybersecurity defense sites. So what's great is we also coordinate with kind of on-site folks who are out there. So again, people, all different kinds of backgrounds who are crossing that stage. We've got techies, we've got huggers, we got everything in between.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104You mentioned your cybersecurity program. I imagine that's picking up steam these days given just the constant news that you hear, the constant attacks on just about every kind of organization. It's just amazing how we're able, gonna be able to keep up with all the craziness that's out there and all the attacks that happen every single day. So you obviously serve working learners. Tell us how you think about designing for working learners. What's the secret sauce over at National?
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104So I think it's threefold. We believe deeply in this notion of, again, focusing on you have to actually serve Anders well, you have to see Anders, which means you have to really focus on what are the policies, the programs, and the practices that are gonna help them be successful. So we're major advocates for the Anders. We are actually trying to shine a light on that student population because nationally, when everybody talks about college, you know this when they-- because you've actually helped catalyze these conversations. When you talk about college students, everybody wants to talk about the 19-year-old with a backpack on the quad, and that's not the, that's not the modal student in higher education. So for us, it's one, shining a light and seeing them. Our secret sauce in serving them, however, is really focused on this notion, we call it whole human education, which is understanding that whole person, and it has to do with our learning and our support and the value proposition that we provide. So our learning models are perfectly designed, specifically designed for this student population, which means four to eight-week models, one-to-one models, all kinds of peer mentoring and support, all kinds of connections. But that learning model is designed especially to make this possible for these kinds of students. And then the support strategy, this is really important. People assume that anybody who is non-traditional is in trouble. That's nonsense. There's a whole lot of rock stars out there who just need flexibility. So one of the things we try to do is get the right support at the right time to the right student in the right way, which means you have to understand what are the kind of family dynamics, what are the financial dynamics, what are the psychosocial dynamics, what are the work dynamics, and then make sure you wrap the right kind of support. 'Cause for some students, it's get out of their way. They're rock stars. They just need flexibility. Others need all kinds of scaffolding, and you've gotta get the scaffolds in there when they absolutely need it. But that means being more precise about how you do it. And then finally, it's the value proposition. And Eloy, this was really important for us when we did our strat plan. What we actually had to come to a, have a a, I don't know, whatever faith somebody comes from, for u- for us at that moment, we actually called it our come to Jesus moment, where we realized- People are not coming to us for degrees. They're not. They're coming to us because they've made a choice to change their lives. Every single one of our students has made a choice to change their lives. They're putting their lives on hold. They're actually balancing those ands because they want it to go in a different trajectory. So what we've discovered was, what it really was, the things that are gonna help them change their lives are the credentials, but it's also the connections they're gonna make with us and the experiences they're gonna have. Those are the three biggest things they talked about. So that means we've got to be active in curating the family of credentials that are gonna give them the most power economically and professionally and personally. That might mean badges, certifications, and degrees curated and connected together, stacked, if you want to use that language, whatever it is. But the whole idea is we wanna harvest all that. And then it's connections. How do we connect students to other students to faculty, and students to professionals in the space? That's a big one. And then lastly, it's experiences. So this means experiential learning, internships, clinicals. How do we do more of that? How do we get on the ground with that? And so that value proposition becomes a really big deal because often that credential might be the best thing in the world, but if they don't know somebody in the space that can get them in, it's really tough for them to be successful, and without that experience, they can't be successful. So all of our-- what's really good is all of our program leaders, they totally get that we're trying to wrap the learning, the support, and the value around these folks, and we have to really analyze our programs and say, "Are we-- have we built in the certifications into that degree pathway? Have we built in the experiences, and have we built in the connection opportunities?" And that makes us think very differently that, college is not a checklist of classes. College is a family of experiences that get somebody on that pathway to possibility, and that's what we're about.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104I love the way that you talked about this to begin with, which is, a lot of your learners, or most of your learners, aren't coming to you for a degree. In my day job here at College Futures, we've done a lot of surveying. We've participated with a lot of organizations that do a lot of surveying, either in California or across the country. And survey after survey, particularly when you're focused on working learners The number one reason that they wanna go to college is to improve their lives, to improve their economic mobility. They don't say, "Because I wanna get a degree in psychology." They say, "Because I want to improve my life. I want to improve my chances of having economic stability, particularly in this marketplace." The other thing that they say is the reason that they don't go is because of cost. So how do you all at National think about affordability, particularly since you're, you are serving working learners, many who have not had great experiences their first time around in higher education?
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104So cost is a big deal because if you talk about accessibility one of the things that we're really proud of, Ted Mitchell from ACE was here in particular because we are one of the opportunity colleges
Whole Human Education And Support
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104and universities, and that's a new measure they did with the Carnegie classifications that measure you based on your accessibility and your earnings. And our-- We're one of the less than ten percent of higher ed that are high on accessibility, low cost, highly flexible programming, and then high opportunity, great earnings for our folks eight to ten years out. And so we take that accessibility thing really seriously. So one is have incredibly reasonable tuition and, our tuition ranges anywhere from eight thousand to sixteen thousand a year, somewhere in that, which is super low cost for a private in particular. But we give away probably anywhere from thirty-five to forty million dollars a year in scholarships, not to mention all the other discounts we provide, especially for military and for community college grads who are coming in. On top of that, we raise money for emergency aid and other kinds of scholarships for the folks that are coming in. Part of what we're trying to do is to make sure that finances never get in the way of somebody when they're on this in the way of them if they're trying to get on this pathway. Just give you a concrete example. In California, and you know this well, they have the associate degree transfer program, the ADT. So if you're a low-income first-generation student and you're on the ADT pathway and you qualify for a Pell Grant, your tuition's basically covered because the Pell Grant's gonna cover your California-based tuition. We decided to match California's tuition for community colleges when they come to us. So basically, if they're low income, first generation, getting a Pell Grant, tuition is-- it's free college all the way through. Like, when they're p- they're not paying tuition all the way through. And it's all about being that access engine for that larger student. And part of it's making a long-term bet because what we know is that student's gonna come back here probably for a master's, and they're gonna come back here for a doctorate in some ways. And what's great is if you serve them well, they're gonna, they're gonna, be with you for a long time. So part of it is just making sure we get the right kind of support at the right time. And we've-- Again, we've, our foundation is really good at raising dollars in particular, specifically for the Anders and for the military population and for others. And we've also been doing that with philanthropy, just trying to help people who are in the philanthropic world realizing, hey, there are other places to give bet- besides Harvard and Yale and Stanford, right? There might be some places that you could actually make more of an economic impact if we can help partner with these thriving students.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104That's right. You could throw more money at the wealthiest students, or you could throw some money at the students that, we're gonna get the greatest lift from in our communities.
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104Amen.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104so we recently passed through San Diego when we were at the ASU+GSV Summit. You can't help i- in every conversation you're in about higher ed these days, there's talk about innovation, there's talk about leveraging AI, agentic AI, and there's talk about what this is going to mean to faculty and staff and, the downside. So how is National wrestling with this idea of technology and the impact it's gonna have on National and your students?
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104What's really great about National University is we are so focused on the student population we have that we are constantly innovating trying to serve these students. So people sometimes will jokingly, "Oh, you're an online institution." I'm like, "Stop it. We were founded in nineteen seventy-one." I'm like, "The hot technology at the time was the cassette tape." We're not an online-- We are a university that will use whatever technology, whatever technique, whatever policy, whatever practice to help the stu- these students learn well and finish strong. So of course, we're like looking all o- we're looking at AI like crazy to figure out... And not to mention augmented reality and virtual reality and figuring out how we can blend all kinds of things into our programming. We've got a really dynamic AI council, and the AI council is cross-functional across the university. It's based on four rings, and we have leaders at every ring level. The inner ring is all about the student experience, and so there are people just focusing on, like, how can we use AI to improve the student experience? And then the next ring is around instruction and support services. So we have ring leaders there that are focused on how do we use AI to make our instruction better and to make our support better. And then we've got the next ring, which is the infrastructure you need to be able to do all that. We have ring leaders that are driving that. And then we have governance and ethics, and we have ring leaders that are driving that. I jokingly say the people who lead this group are the Lord of the Rings, right? They're managing all the rings all the way through. But it means we catalyze this conversation and- Two things I'll just share with you. One is we really have this about, with, and beyond framework that we've adopted, which is we are committed... In fact, we think it is educational malpractice not to begin to expose your students to AI, full stop. It's gonna be part of how they work, how they play, how they live. So we want AI to be a part of the about side, which is whatever they're learning about, there's got to be an AI tool or experience that's probably gonna make them a better lawyer make them a better criminal justice person or a person who's in healthcare or a person who's in education. There are AI tools those folks could be using, so let's expose them to those while they're, when they're in their educational program. Second, we want them to learn with AI. There's no doubt that AI holds the potential to help more people learn more things more fully than ever before. How can we help these pe- help our students learn how to learn with AI so that when they leave us, they not only have their content, they actually have a learning engine with them at the same time? And then the beyond AI, which is the critical thinking, the problem-solving, the decision-making, the durable skills, the human skills woven together in a package. So that helps because every one of our faculty and staff know that about, with, and beyond is the package we're trying to kinda make sure we're layering it. And then it's about helping them navigate this kind of weird world. So one of our faculty members, actually a group of our faculty members in our College of Education, our Sanford College, they came up with this thing called Raise Five, which I love, which is basically a rubric for AI in scholastic environments. And what Raise Five is it's five levels for any assignment. It is color-coded and leveled so that is, e- every assignment has a color code and a level. Level five is no AI at all. Level one is you're using full intercollaborative AI to be able to pull it together. And at every level it tells you, "Here's what you can use. Here's some exemplars. Here's how you document it in your learning." And Raise Five is now ubiquitous across the university, so any assignment that the fe- that students open up is tagged as a Raise Five. And what's great about it is there's no uncertainty. It's "This is a level three. Do whatever you need to do. This is a level four. Use your Grammarly. Use whatever that is." But what's great is there's no uncertainty. There's no worry about what I can and can't do, and then there's "Here's how you document it." Here's what's even better. The faculty when they're designing the assignments have to ask themselves, "Is this a level five? Is this a level four? Is this a level three?" It gets them thinking about it. So when our law school, when our law school ro- rolled out Raise Five, 95% of the assignments were a level five. No AI. And then that just started, the dean said it just started this whole set of conversations about, "Really? Does that have to be a level five? That could probably be a four. That could probably be a three." And it got people putting their toe in the water, which has been fun
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104I think that's a great approach because, look we're all in the same boat here. Some of us, depending on our jobs or our age or our generation are Either more familiar or not familiar with AI. We're all using it, we just don't realize it on any given day. But to have an institution continuously ask those questions and continue to look at how they answer those questions and dig in and improve the pedagogy, improve the delivery, I think is exactly what we need out of every college and university today because, learners, particularly the younger they are, they're coming with a whole set of different expectations about AI.
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104Yeah, absolutely. And, and truthfully, there-- I think it's important for us to be somewhat humble and have a sense of humility. And the, I think it's great for students to see that we're learning alongside them as some of this stuff is changing, and that's okay to say, "Look, we're gonna figure this out together." But our job, and, my, my framework around this, we talk about this across the university as well, which is nothing about AI should surprise us because higher education has always been about trying to help our students optimize collective intelligence. And collective intelligence is how do I take all the tools and resources at my disposal to come together, solve problems, change the world, do whatever I want to do. And seventy years ago, that was the family I was born into, the friends I'm around, the schools I went to, the libraries that
Affordability And Transfer Pathways
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104they had, and maybe my encyclopedia. That was my collective intelligence tool chest. But, with-- And then just fifteen years ago, it, the internet got added to that, along with mobile devices, and now it's AI. It's all part of this tool suite that we have to drive collective intelligence. And God forbid we should hold them back from leveraging something that's gonna help them get better and smarter if they can do it. Are people gonna abuse it? Are bad things gonna happen? A hundred percent. I wrote a piece in two thousand for EDUCAUSE Review called "The Road to Digital Democracy," and in there I noted number one users of the internet at the time, number one users were hate groups and pornographers. They were, like, the top users of it, and we should not be surprised that bad people are gonna use AI.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104Yeah,
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104are. We just gotta make sure we get involved in
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104No, that's right. And, just hearing you talk just reminds me, when I was a kid, I had-- my access to information and data was that Encyclopedia Britannica that was sitting in the bookshelf. Now, it never got updated because we only bought the one version, but that's where I went to. And now if you think about it, on your phone you have access to just about every piece of information that humans have ever created. So our job now as educators is to really help learners leverage that data in, in a way that really helps them be better learners, be better, people be better at what they're going to do in the workforce. It just-- I know we're going through that swing of the pendulum right now. There's a lot of talk about getting devices out of the classroom and things like that, and I g- I get it. But our job as educators is to help our learners figure out how to leverage those tools, not to run away from those tools.
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104I just looked up something really quick. I'm just-- I'm reading a book right now called Destined for War. And we're gonna follow it up by the kind of like book afterwards called Athens and Sparta. But it's all about the kind of competition between China and America. So Destined for War was written back, it was like two thousand seventeen, two thousand eighteen. But it was really a compelling thing, and it's so good that like literally Xi brought it with him to the first summit with Trump, like to say, "We should talk about this," because it really is about this war of civilizations. So I'm super intrigued reading through it this weekend, and then I'm realizing, boy, so much of this stuff is out of date 'cause it's two thousand eighteen. I wonder where we are now. Literally went to ChatGPT and said, "Give me a summary of the the state of our economies between China and America with updated data, and give me a projection for the next ten years." And it compiled like this amazing kind of thing, and I just had hit read it to me, and it read it to me as I was driving home, and I got totally updated on all the actual live data on China versus America. And I got home and I'm thinking to myself, "This is bananas." I'm literally reading this book, and I'm like, it's an audiobook. I'm doing it as I'm hiking. I'm intrigued by, okay, where are we now? And I ask this question, and in not even a minute, this response came back with all kinds of citations about where they got the information and got me that much smarter. Like it's gonna be an amazing time to live. The fact that, like you, like I remember in my ear- like anybody asked a question in our family, no one knew the answer. It was either go to the library or go to the encyclopedias that happened to be ten years old. That's the only way you can answer the question. And now everything's at your fingertips. Let me tell you what, my wife loves looking up things I'm saying I think I'm right about and checking it out and then coming back.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104I think that's the biggest challenge for parents is your kids can now spot check you, everything you say
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104that's it. Yeah.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104A very diverse background. I think we first met when you were at Gates, then we chatted again when you went over to Civitas. You spent some time at Western Governors University. You're at National now. How do all those experiences inform what you do as a leader today?
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104Yeah. The red thread of my career really comes from my kind of family background. I come from a family of nine kids. I have an African American brother, Native American brother, Korean sister. We had 25 foster kids who rotated through my house
AI In Practice With Raise Five
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104during the time I was growing up. First generation kid, and my parents wouldn't let me take accelerated classes towards college and high school because they didn't think they could pay for it. So I forged the signatures. And then when I got out, luckily for me, there was a community college nearby. Mesa Community College completely opened up my pathway to possibility. And I went from Mesa to to ASU, got my undergrad, got my master's. But I was bussing tables, waiting tables, paying my way through school. I was an A&R. And then went to UT Austin and got my doctorate, and fell in love with education along the way, fell in love with teaching along the way. And one of the things I decided to do was to dedicate my life towards opening up pathways to this kind of possibility for more people. And so the red thread throughout my career, whether it's been in whether it's been in education, whether it's been in philanthropy, ed tech, whatever it is, I've always been working on policies, practices, technologies, tools that can open the doors for people in the world of higher education. And for me, I've been able to jump between learning experiences in those areas that have been transformative for me. I've had unbelievable mentors, great experiences along the way, just learned a ton. And what I've realized, and you know this well, is that th- is to do this well, it's a Rubik's cube. Like you need the right policies, the right practices, the right technologies, the right people coming together to be able to open these doors in a much broader way. Things we thought were crazy 25 years ago are now normal. I remember when early colleges, we started promoting early colleges. Yeah. Pe- everything from the internet to early colleges to like, it's just all kinds of stuff that are, and again, I still remember we were at the Gates Foundation we're gonna end developmental education as we know
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104Right.
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104so damaging. And people are like, "Are you crazy?" It's no, you look now, it's not-- there's nothing like it was back then, right? So we've come through so many changes, and for me, it's been fun to be a part of a family of innovators who have been trying to make these changes to make it more likely that more people from more diverse backgrounds could be more successful than ever before. That's the red thread. And so being here at National is just an ultimate, in some ways, coming together of so many of those different different kind of backgrounds. It really makes this, the story kind of fun.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104Let me ask you one last question as we begin to wrap up. I, like you, I talk to a lot of higher ed leaders public sector, private nonprofits, for-profits, third-party intermediaries, ed tech companies, a whole host of different players in the marketplace. How do you and your team at National think about dealing with all of the uncertainty that's in the higher education marketplace today, whether that's federal policy, which is upending some things or shining a spotlight on, on things like return on investment or the challenges that we face in thinking about how we serve our learners to just the changing way that learners think about higher education. How are you and your team thinking about all those changes, and what would be your advice to a new administrative leader who's coming into a college or university today?
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104I would say three things. One is the realization, and you know this, we just talked about this. If you're a leader in the world of education, you are always helping your organization get on a pathway from novel to normal. There's always gonna be novel, new things that are coming up, and then you're gonna watch it go on this pathway from novel to normal. And so what you have to do is introduce it into your organization, start the kinda sense-making process, start getting the integration and you've gotta get skilled at that. You have to develop your ability of working with innovators and early adopters, getting to that early majority, the late majority. You're-- if that scares you, do not get in this work. That is this work. Secondly, the only way you're gonna do that part right is you have to have a learning culture. You have to have a culture where everyone's trying to get smarter all the time. You've gotta have the humility to say, "I- I'm gonna have to figure out some new things and learn some new things." We have, I love and use broader learning culture. We have a university leadership council where we meet once a month with the 50 top leaders across the university. But at the end of it, we have a dessert, and the dessert is a common reading, and we always either do a book or a set of TED Talks or podcasts that get us smarter, and then we come back in the next meeting, and we digest and talk about what this means for NU. So every month we're reading something that really catalyzes
Leadership Advice And Final Takeaways
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104us and makes us think differently. So it can be unreasonable hospitality, the power of moments, epic measures. We've read, like probably in the last three years, we've read 15 books and a whole bunch of different kind of lectures and other resources. But we get smart together on that, which is fantastic. Every board meeting, we bring in experts from the fie- outside field to come in and catalyze a conversation at our board dinner that, that continues into the board meeting the next day. It is just this constant try to get us smarter, try to help us learn the process. And then you also meet all kinds of fantastic people in doing the larger work. And then third thing around this is just remember, in the end, this is a people business, and if you're gonna do this work well, you've gotta keep making these human connections with, great folks like you in the field, people like you who are making a difference in the policy world, really connecting and learning from your students. This is a human... You're in the human development and relationship business. And as, as great as all this technology is, I have never once at the commencement cer- commencement ceremony last weekend, I didn't hear one student stand up and say, "D2L saved my life." Right now, that's not what they talk about. They talk about the mentor, they talk about the peer, they talk about the faculty member. You just have to realize this is a human business, and you've gotta just make those human connections and build those human capacities to be able to try to drive this process. There's just so much moving and changing all the time that sense of empathy and humility and connection to this work is just gonna make you so much better as a leader.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104I couldn't agree with that more. The technology doesn't save the learner. Using the technology to create a stronger connection to the learner is what gets us there, that human connection. So Mark, I really appreciate you taking the time to join us, and thanks for letting us get under the hood at National and let us get under the hood of how you're thinking about higher education today. So thanks for joining us, and thanks for your leadership.
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104And a big thank you, Eli, to you. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of colleges and universities out there causing good trouble, really trying to do good work, and you're shining a light on them, and it's it's super important that we can learn from each other. You-- I've joked about this before. This is a case model world. It's copy and steal everything. There's good people out there. Let's figure out how we're gonna bring it together. So thank you for the work you do.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104No, thank you. And this is a collective. This is not about one university or one college doing it on their own. This is about all of us learning from each other,
mark-milliron_1_05-18-2026_101104Our competition is poverty. Our competition is poverty.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_05-18-2026_101104Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. All right, folks. Thanks for joining me here on the Rant podcast. I appreciate you joining us. You've been listening to my conversation with Dr. Mark Milliron, who's president of National University. We've been talking about what's going on at National and how he's thinking about the future of education, and how he's leveraging technology and a constant learning environment to improve the way that he and his team serve working learners. So if you're watching us on YouTube, please hit subscribe. If you're listening to us on your favorite podcast platform, continue to follow us and download this episode. Thanks for joining us, everybody, and we will see you all soon.
