Badges, Bots, And Busy Students at the University of Phoenix

College was never meant to be the center of a working adult’s life and pretending otherwise is one reason so many learners stall out. We talk with Dr. John Wood, chief academic officer and provost of the University of Phoenix, as the university marks 50 years of building higher education around working learners who juggle full-time jobs, caregiving, and everything else life throws at them.

We get specific about what learner-centered design actually means: mobile-friendly coursework, support that works outside 9 to 5, and faculty who are real-world practitioners. Then we dig into one of the biggest shifts in online education and workforce alignment right now: skills-based learning. John explains how Phoenix mapped its curriculum to job skills using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, industry advisory councils, programmatic accreditors, alumni feedback, and faculty expertise, then turned that work into visible skills profiles, micro-credentials, and digital badges that students can share with employers.

We also cover how to measure economic mobility in ways that go beyond marketing, why transfer credit mobility matters for cost and time, and what partnership can look like with community colleges. From competency-based education to AI in higher education, we explore what changes when every graduate is expected to be AI fluent and when AI is used to improve service, efficiency, and learning outcomes without replacing human judgment.

If you care about adult learners, workforce skills, credential transparency, and what the next version of higher ed should be, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review with the one change you think would make college work better for working adults.

Transcript

Why Phoenix Still Matters At 50

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hi, this is the lawyer Ortiz Oakley, and this is 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 are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the University of Phoenix. Yes, that's right, the University of Phoenix. The pioneer in distance education, a pioneer in online education, fifty years of history. Mostly good, some rocky, but the University of Phoenix is still here and still serving working learners. From its early days in distance education, shaping the landscape throughout the country of what a university that is focused on working learners should be all about to its evolution into online education. And then the rapid growth. For a while there, you couldn't go down an interstate or a freeway here in California and not see a sign for the University of Phoenix. But it also had its challenges, hitting some rocky times and being a target of the federal government who was accusing it of predatory practices. But here we are today, fast forward to today, the University of Phoenix is innovating, it's refocused on working learners, going back to its roots and innovating in a time where the need to design around the needs of working learners couldn't be more important than ever. And here on the RAM Podcast, we feel that this is a critical component for the future of higher education. Designing with the learner directly in mind, and in this case, the working learner. Individuals throughout the country that need access to a quality post-secondary experience that allows them to gain the skills that they need in order to thrive in this workforce. Here on the RAM podcast, we've had several guests talking about the needs of working learners and the way that they design for them. Most recently, with Mark Million from National University, we've also had Greg Fowler from the University of Maryland Global Campus to Scott Pulsifer from Western Governors University and Ajita Menon from Calbright College. Colleges and universities throughout the country that are putting a clear focus on working learners. And this is something that is not just true for these online institutions, it's also true and needs to be true for every institution. The need to think about how it serves learners throughout their entire learning journey. And today that learning journey extends throughout their entire career. So in this episode, I have a chance to sit down with Dr. John Wood, who is the chief academic officer and provost of the University of Phoenix. We'll talk about how he's intentionally designing around the needs of those working learners, what working learners are telling them today. We'll talk about the future of teaching and learning at the University of Phoenix and what's in that secret sauce at the University of Phoenix today, and how he thinks about the future of teaching and learning going forward in his advice to college administrators and leaders today. So, with all that as a backdrop, please enjoy my conversation with Dr. John Wood, Chief Academic Officer and Provost at the University of Phoenix.

Who The Working Learners Are

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Dr. Wood, welcome to the Rant Podcast. Hey, thanks for having me on today. It's great to have you. Thanks for doing this. I know you've got a million things going on in your world. So I appreciate you taking the time. I know our listeners had a great time listening into the last podcast we did with your colleague Jamie Smith about what's going on at the University of Phoenix. So we thought we'd go at it one more time and talk a little bit more, given one that it's the 50th anniversary of the University of Phoenix. So congratulations. I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about your anniversary. But let me just dive in. Given your 50 years of history, John, uh all that's been going on at the University of Phoenix, you have been a pioneer in distance education, a pioneer in online education. And I know the university has had a lot of ups and downs, uh, serves a lot of diverse learners, and has also had some challenges along the way, you know, sometimes being a target of people who had concerns about private uh education. So tell us about what's going on at the university today, about your academic mission, and who your learners are today.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Yeah, uh thanks for again for having me on to talk a little bit about Phoenix. It's uh it's always a pleasure to share what we're working on. We were founded 50 years ago, as you said, it's our uh 50th anniversary this year. Massive majority of our students are working full-time. So when we were founded, it was to fit education into the busy life of a working adult. And the model previously had been that adults needed to modify their lives to fit into higher education, right? For the most part. So I think we were probably the first purpose-built institution to fit into an adult's uh working uh caregiving and other myriad of responsibilities within their life. For the last decade, we've had uh uh I think a period where we've really leaned into our heritage as a as a pioneer and as an innovator. You spoke with Jamie uh a little while back. He and I were hired not too far apart, maybe about a year apart. I'm in my ninth year, and I think he's in his eighth year. During the time that we've been working together, as I said, we've I think really, really uh reinvigorated the spirit of innovation. Uh really uh building on a model that was really important uh when it was built and still really important today, that our faculty are practitioners. Uh they have, on average, uh better than 25 years experience in their fields. And we pair that with the academic credentials that they have, and the students therefore see in their faculty uh people who are doing or have done the jobs that they themselves uh aspire to do in the future. And and making the the learning very contextual for our for our students has been really important. Uh fitting service uh into the busy lives of our students has been really important. And then to your question about kind of recent days, uh, we spent nearly three years mapping our entire curriculum for skills. Uh so we went and looked at the job definitions from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, uh, input from industry advisory councils, uh a lot input from uh programmatic accreditors, you name it, and went back and took a hard look at our curriculum to make sure we were teaching the appropriate skills and our content, that we were measuring those skills in our assessments. And now the the working learner who always had great context uh for their learning from their faculty and and arguably from their curriculum too, has another layer of uh context because as they proceed through their coursework, they see a skills profile that builds uh around them. And that skills profile matches to jobs in the in the marketplace. And the idea is that our students can be motivated by that, but they also can see how they could communicate what they're learning in this new language. Everyone's talking about skills-based hiring, and now they've got a language to be able to support uh what they've learned in those conversations with a boss or prospective boss about what they know how to do specifically. And that's better, we think, than a bachelor's degree in business or a bachelor's degree in education. Breaking that down into smaller components uh has been a really big advancement for us in terms of serving the working learner and giving them that uh that kind of extra support and the new language that they can uh share with the world.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

So I'm gonna come back to this notion of skills-based hiring because everybody's talking about it. Um a lot of organizations are trying to make sense of it, uh, but it doesn't feel like we're there yet. So let me put a pin in that question. Let me come back to your learners. So I know obviously the University of Phoenix is has grown up in Phoenix, but who are your learners? I mean, uh are they in all 50 states? Uh yeah. What what do they look like?

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Yeah, all 50 states, uh, a number of different countries. Uh our focus is really domestic, but we do have students who know in other countries. Average age is 36, and close to 80% are working full-time. Right. About two-thirds are first generation college students. A majority of them are caregivers, all of those things at once, and they see education as a way to um to grow and to uh give themselves uh a better chance of advancement in their careers, or sometimes uh a career change possibility. Um that's that's who we've long served, and it remains uh that that way today.

Designing For The Third Priority

SPEAKER_00 9:40

I know when I talked to Jamie, he mentioned something that stuck with me, and I still uh talk about it today, that you know, there at the University of Phoenix, hearing from your learners, they're telling you that you're probably the third most important thing in their lives, uh, and you design around that. So what does that intentional design look like in practice, particularly for our listeners who are working at colleges and universities that are trying to make this pivot to do a better job of serving working learners?

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Yeah, Jamie did a great job of describing that. It's uh work and it's caregiving and oftentimes other things, and we're in amongst those other things. So we're we're almost always not one or two. Right. Uh, and if you're three and you've got to fit into somebody's uh you know busy life, a number of things can can really work well in terms of design. We've got to be approachable on uh mobile devices, a lot of uh coursework can be done on a mobile device. Uh, we've got to be highly relevant. So it's again the skills-based uh curriculum that is super relevant that people could put to work the things they're learning the next day on the job that faculty give them that added uh relevance. It's that they could access service anytime, anywhere. So uh, you know, they could get an answer to, for instance, a financial aid question 24-7 from a bot if they don't have time to call in between nine and five because they're working. It's those kinds of things that we're always looking to do again to uh meet them where they are. And and on the curriculum for a second, uh, somebody might just have a precious few hours at night and on weekends. Uh, it might be on a train or a bus during a commute. And we've got to be able to make sure the curriculum is really, really relevant, really, really focused. Again, uh they can access it through mobile devices. Um, they can get answers to questions during that time. And and I think putting the learner at the center is very different than uh traditional higher education models, which tend to be more institution-centric and faculty-centric. That's that's the key difference, I think.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Yes, that's been the traditional model, although given the the change in mood over the last couple of years from what we're hearing from learners, I think more and more universities, particularly the regionals and community colleges for sure, are beginning to put a put a brighter focus on the needs of working learners. You know, there's all this talk about enrollment clips these days, and you mean just judging from your enrollment or a Western Governors University or University of Maryland Global Campus. I mean, there's lots of enrollment still out there. It's just a matter of are you building something that learners wanna take on? Uh so let's get back to this question about economic mobility, skills-based hiring, you know, the way that you're designing your curriculum around skills and competencies. I mean, that every college and university today is talking about that,

Mapping Curriculum To Real Skills

SPEAKER_00 12:50

whether they're doing it because they know it's the right thing to do, or whether they're doing it because new federal accountability standards or state accountability standards are forcing this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

How do you think about designing around skills? And how do you ensure that the skills that you are embedding in the curriculum and programs of studies are skills that are translate or articulate to the employer? Uh I know that's that's a topic of a lot of discussion. You know, it's created a whole industry around places like Lightcast and Burning Glass and others. So, how do you do it there at the University of Phoenix?

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Yeah. Yeah, there um uh there are tools for us in this process. You mentioned Lightcast, Burning Glass, so is the Bureau of Labor Statistics and all their data. Every job in this country has a code, every job code has a definition, uh, every definition has uh an embedded set of skills. And those are all inputs for us. We we have other accountabilities and inputs as well. A programmatic accreditor, for instance, uh CCNE for nursing, will say these things have to be taught. So you layer that in wherever there are programmatic accreditations involved. All of our disciplines have uh industry advisory councils that meet regularly, and these folks will say, We're seeing this and we're needing that. And you layer that in. Alumni will tell you, yeah, this really worked for me when I left Phoenix. This helped. Uh uh, this would have been more useful or less useful, and you layer that in. Faculty, because they're working uh practitioners in these fields, our faculty are a great source of information. So you end up with a lot of opinions. Uh, you sort of cross-reference all those opinions, and you end up with a bit of a Rosetta stone. It says, these are all the skills that have to be in your curriculum. When we talk to all these different people and we weigh all these sources, these are the ones that bubble to the top as the most often referenced. These are the other ones that should be in there, and they may be nicer to have, but not critical. Um as I said, if you go digging then into your content and make sure you're teaching those things, make sure you're assessing those things. Uh, that's that's very uh much um easy to say and tough to do. Right. Uh in a in a traditional environment, the faculty member he or she can say, I changed my syllabus this semester and I'm gonna teach this, and I'm gonna make these my learning outcomes. And and they can do that uh with a standardized curriculum. We can, I think, approach this notion of skills mapping and skills assessment um much more cleanly. And we can revise based on those inputs changing, but we know that everybody will process through this content and through these assessments, and we'll have all that data. And we combine these sets of skills into micro-credentials, badges. Uh, student will get an email one day as they finish a course and say, You've earned a new badge, and with a click, they can post that to LinkedIn or ZipRecruiter. Again, there's real data behind it, you know, metadata, saying what they learned, giving them a language to communicate what they learned, which we think is really, really important. We've even uh kind of taken this one step further where we can uh scour the web for jobs, and we can line up their skills profile against the jobs that are being posted and say, hey, student X, we see that you're an 80% match for this job. And that's you know, eye-opening to many people. Uh, we can offer to help them write a resume, prepare for an interview, uh, or keep looking and seeing their skills profile develop a closer match and then apply. This idea that uh a working adult will go to school part-time to get a bachelor's degree over six years and hope to get something at the end of it is, I think, no longer good enough.

unknown 16:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

They want to see skills that they earn, uh, learn and earn along the way, how those skills map to different opportunities. And ideally, they'd probably like to get a new and better job multiple times over that six years. And and I think we're set up to help them aim at that and uh ideally attain that.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

We talk about measuring economic outcomes a lot in higher ed these days,

Badges And Job Matching Tools

SPEAKER_00 17:15

um, uh again, either because it's the right thing to do for some places or because now they're making me do it uh in other cases. So, how do you actually measure that economic outcome for your learner? I mean, is it about wages? Uh, over what period of time? What does economic success, economic mobility success look like at University of Phoenix?

SPEAKER_01 17:36

With new regulations, that data will be pulled for us. Uh, it'll be you know, of your graduates, uh, we pulled the data, we know how much they're making as compared to people who don't have your degrees. So that data will be pulled for us. In addition to that, a lot of programmatic accreditors require it. So a number of our programs are programmatically accredited, and we're pulling, you know, whether they uh passed a certain certification exam, say the NCLEX, uh, and they're reporting to us if they're employed and at what level. So a lot of programmatic accreditors require uh that kind of reporting already. We're also asking them, you know, critical questions like Did our education prepare you, in your opinion, for your career? Uh 87% said yes in the last uh survey we did. We're asking them, uh, did the skills that were imparted and earned by you, learned by you, uh, was that relevant or applicable to your career? And we're measuring that. So uh a regular alumni survey can do those sorts of things as well. Right. These are opinion-based, of course, but I think a combination of what we do for the programmatic creditors, what's being required in the future of all of us, and then these directional indicators will clearly asking folks, hey, did you did you get what you what you bargained for? We ask another question, would you do it again? And and that's I think uh a huge indicator. Somebody says, Yeah, I'm not sure. Uh, that's not that's not a reendorsement. So we look at that pretty carefully as well.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

So there was a time when I was uh chancellor of the California Community Colleges, and the University of Phoenix was at the time, I mean my first couple of years as chancellor, the number one transfer institution for the California Community Colleges. Things began to change over time. Uh, I know the university faced a lot of challenges and sort of reinvented itself, but what does partnership look like today at the University of Phoenix? Are you still working with community colleges? Is transfer still a thing for the University of Phoenix? What does it look like today?

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Absolutely. Kind of reflecting on what you just said for a second there. We were originally set up to be the original transfer university. When the university was founded, you had to have 60 credit hours. In fact, you had to have a letter from your boss supporting you going back to school. And you had to be 25 years of age or older. Those were those were application questions. Uh, as you said, we we evolved over time. Fast forward to today, we have a couple of big things that I think are important for your question. The one is we have a really good articulation uh track record with the creative colleges. Uh, we are very transfer friendly. We redesigned, um, I think in my second or third year, we redesigned every bachelor's program to be more transfer friendly. That is to say, that a lot of students came through diploma programs, uh, uh certificate programs, technical associates, uh, different kinds of associate

Measuring Economic Mobility Outcomes

SPEAKER_01 20:40

degrees where uh more or less credits, depending on where they were trying to take them, were received. We tried to make uh our programs uh designed in such a way that we took the maximum amount of credits, uh, uh and we've got some great statistics on that. That's thing one. I'll I'll share with you a bit more about that. Thing two is we built a program where I think we've got about 80 or 85 community colleges in this program, where a student who takes a prescribed pathway at a community college can top up their associate degree to get a bachelor's degree uh in about uh 14 or 15 months uh very affordably. Uh and it it's key that they take a prescribed pathway at that lower price point with the community college. That I think is a true partnership. And as I said, we've got nearly 100 institutions participating in that. And then kind of writ large, zooming out again on this whole notion of transfer credit. The number I think that is just staggering in a press release, maybe from maybe a month or so ago, was that uh we transferred in seven million credits in recent years and literally saved students uh billions in in uh dollars in tuition, not to mention all the time, uh, by having them not have to repeat numbers of credits, which I think. Is pretty staggering.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

It is staggering, and given that this is now talk at the federal level about how do you ensure credit mobility. Yeah. I mean, it's it's sad that we're even having this conversation at the federal level, but it's great to see that there are still some universities that have always and continue to be transfer friendly to communicate.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Yeah, we've not we've not come that far from uh very recent times where flagships in states were not accepting their role and branch campuses courses one for one uh in transfer. I'm not saying that's happening today, but we it it wasn't that long ago that that was pretty common. And and you're right, in uh the most recent uh negotiated rulemaking, there was a awful lot of discussion about transfer credit. Uh we were mentioned actually in in those proceedings twice as being kind of a leader in that space. We were we were thrilled to follow uh those proceedings and to see our name pop up in the transcript in a couple places in a great way.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

That's right. It's always good when you pop up at the federal level in a great way.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Uh let me ask you this competency-based education is is sort of going through uh um a period of enlightenment. Uh more and more states, more and more institutions are adopting CBE. I noticed in one of your recent commercials, you're you're talking about CBE and you're implemented CBE. What what does CBE mean to the University of Phoenix and your programs of study and where do you see it going?

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Yeah, so uh about six years ago, we built our

Transfer Credit And Community College Paths

SPEAKER_01 23:40

first competency-based program, six or seven years. Uh we've hit our uh 5,000 graduate. We have uh a small number of programs that are built this way. They're credit-based CBE. I'll get to the difference in a minute here, but in our credit-based CBEs, the commercial you probably saw was the MBA that could be obtained in 11 months for about 11K. Right. It requires for that student. There's a little bit of a different entrance requirement with a bit more work experience. Student has a little bit more flexibility. There are two roles in that classroom. There's an instructor and there's also a coach in every course. Students have a bit more flexibility as to how fast they proceed through those courses, and that's been really successful for us. We have uh a handful of programs like that. We also have a small number of experimental programs that are competency-based as well, but they're direct assessment. So they're not governed by time on task.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Uh, and and the notion of the traditional definitions of the credit hour. And uh those uh again, a small number of programs for us. Uh, we have students completing uh, for instance, uh one of those programs is a bachelor's in psychology, and we have uh students who complete that program for less than $10,000. We have a number of those graduates. And in both cases, this was for a learner who it has a bit of a different background with a little bit more in-field uh relevant work experience. Can we give them something that's even a little bit more flexible than our five and six-week one course at a time model? And and I think continuing to innovate in these ways to save people time and money uh is one really important. And two, competency-based lines up perfectly with the skills mapping that we've done. Competencies and another uh you know parlance are skills. Um and and so we're really well positioned for this, and we're excited about continuing to grow those programs. And uh, like I said, we celebrated 5,000 graduates just a couple of weeks ago.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Well, that's great to hear. I think the more and different on-ramps we can build for the different types of learners, the different experiences they have, the different opportunities, I think the better. Let me let me ask you this. Um, we've talked a lot about the skills necessary in today's economy. How do you build programs of study that have the skills and competencies that align with the jobs that are being created? How do you think about the skills that are not directly aligned to those hard skills, you know, more of the soft skills? How do you how do you prepare students at the University of Phoenix to not only survive, you know, the the world of AI, but thrive in it, uh, given the importance of human skills that are going to be required?

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Yeah. I'm always really excited to talk about this because when any of those lists come out every year, like the Forbes list, the skills that employers are seeking, uh the technical skills are never the top skills listed. The durable, unfortunately, sometimes called soft skills, right? Are listed at the top. So if we cannot call them soft skills, that that would be my first recommendation. Right. Human skills, uh, durable skills. Right. So we map for those too. And uh I think what's really interesting about the way we map for those is they're not just taught in the gen ed pool. You know, so you don't just learn those in your gen eds. You can actually learn critical thinking and teamwork and and you know, judgment, uh, you know, all those sorts of durable skills in your core classes. So uh we we map them throughout the curriculum, we measure them throughout the curriculum. Groups of those skills can be badged as well. And so students earn badges in those skills, which we think are really important. And then to your point about AI, those skills arguably are getting even more important. Right. Because if AI can do some of the things, technical things that you maybe used to have to learn in, say, an accounting program that now machines can do, uh, your your critical thinking skills, your judgment, your teamwork, your collaboration are going to help you be able to leverage the output of the machines and work with other people. Uh, that won't change. Like I said, I'm always really excited to talk about this because we map for both, we teach both, we assess both. Uh, and AI for us is being woven through every course and program because we think AI gives people a set of tools. It can't be taught in isolation. It's how do I apply AI in in environmental science or how do I apply AI in accounting? So we're teaching that in context. Uh, so the three skills I think in the future are uh the durable skills are as important as they ever were, and maybe

Competency Based Degrees Done Faster

SPEAKER_01 28:40

increasingly so. The technical skills you know maintain their importance, and uh AI, in fact, kind of uh woven through the technical skills is sort of the newest dimension.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Let me let me talk a little bit about AI. You can't be in a conversation today in any industry and not talk about AI in particularly in in higher education, you know. You can be at ASUGSV, you can be at EDUCAS, you can be at any of a number of places where we're talking about the future of higher education, and AI seems to be right at the center of this. So given where you're at today, and and obviously the University of Phoenix is deploying AI and thinking about how it can better serve learners and and improve the enterprise through leveraging AI. If you think about the University of Phoenix over the next five years, what do you think will be different? What what does the University of Phoenix look like five years from now, given all the innovation that you're seeing today?

SPEAKER_01 29:46

We are about two and a half years removed from writing our first uh student-facing AI use policy. It's already gone through a revision. And if I had to guess, we'll revise it annually over the next five years because the tools are changing that fast. That would be my first prediction is that student use is changing the way students are learning and policy needs to keep up with that. Secondly, as I said, we're weaving AI uh skill development through the curriculum. So we talk a lot about AI fluency. A graduate from the University of Phoenix has to uh have those uh technical skills of their program, has to have the durable skills, and they all have to be AI fluent, uh, we think to operate in any field. So on AI, I we'll see it revised, but we have this approach we've called the three pillars. The one is we're using AI to be better at our jobs. That can be evaluating transfer credit using machine learning and AI to do it faster so students get an answer quicker about what they could get credit for, uh, or get service uh on financial aid with a bot. So we will use AI to be better at our jobs and pass that efficiency along to the students. We haven't increased tuition since 2018 because we keep finding ways to use technology to be more efficient, right? That's thing one in the three pillars. Thing two,

Durable Skills And AI Fluency

SPEAKER_01 31:10

again, I think is making sure that every student graduates AI fluid. Uh, and and I think that's that's definitely going to be the case. Thing three, I I believe this, is we're gonna improve student learning outcomes leveraging AI. You go to you mentioned ASUGSV. Uh, every vendor there was, you know, here's our AI tutor we can put in your in your course. I think I was quoted as saying there's no silver bullet because you know there are different tools for different jobs, but an AI tutor of some shape or form makes sense in the in the learning that is happening. And so students will get service that way and they'll get learning support that way. And that'll continue to evolve. We have something inside our LMS that can help students with uh university policy questions and library resources and research resources, send them to our Center for AI resources, et cetera, et cetera. But in a growing number of courses, we have the ability for them to get Socratic help that isn't an answer machine of how to write their assignment for the week, uh, but to help them wrestle with questions about the content. And I like to say be the faculty member while our faculty member sleeps, because you there's no replacing the human uh faculty member who has all those years of experience, but I sure would like to have them sleep some of the time.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Yes, wouldn't we all? Well, let me ask you uh one last question as we begin to wrap up, John. Um, you've been, you know, in and around higher ed for some time. You've had this great experience there at the University of Phoenix over the last eight, nine years. Uh, given all the changes and uncertainty that you see going on in higher education today, what would be your advice to a new vice provost or a new academic leader in in higher education today? Whether you're more traditional or uh more progressive online institution, what would be your advice to to leaders today?

SPEAKER_01 33:11

Uh I think, first off, higher education in in this country is um is amazing because there's so many different types of higher education for students. You've got the traditional college experience of the liberal arts uh institutions for formation of 17, 18, 19-year-olds who want to have that kind of life. And then you've got something at the other end of the spectrum for working adults that fits into their life, and you've got all these different uh models in between. That's never going to change. There's a uh there's a diversity of institutions in this country because there's a diversity of needs and and learner types. Uh but I I think kind of running through it all, and we see the signposts for this everywhere. You talked about the rulemaking that's going on and increased calls for accountability. We see that every institution in the country nearly raises tuition uh every year, and sometimes, in fact, on average, more than the rate of inflation each year. Right. Uh, we see uh lots of talk about the enrollment cliff. What I think we'll see in the in the future, and I

Advice For New Academic Leaders

SPEAKER_01 34:20

would advise anyone to kind of think about this a lot, is that the learner who needs to learn for life in smaller chunks is the majority of learners now and and increasingly so moving forward. And so people who we say the half-life of skills is shortening because uh technical changes that are happening so rapidly, that's having impact for the adult learner, but I think even for the traditional learner, and it it drives a need for greater levels of transparency of what's being learned uh and and uh skill building, the durable skills. Uh, you know, if if you have a niche, you lean into that niche. Uh but while leaning into that niche, whether you're a traditional institution for 18-year-olds or you're an institution built for working adults, you got to do a better and better and better job of assessing uh and and uh being able to prove what students are learning and keeping pace with the half-life of skills, which is shortening. And that's that's not going to change no matter who the learner is. So I I I uh encourage everybody to think about cost containment, transparency, assessment, and uh keeping pace with that really rapid change we're seeing in in skills.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

Well, on those great pillars of advice for future leaders in higher education, I I just want to say thank you, John, for taking the time to join us here on the Rant Podcast. And and thanks for the work that you're leading at the University of Phoenix.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Yeah, uh really enjoyed chatting with you, especially with uh your background in the California system. Watched a lot of your podcasts uh over the years. Uh happy to finally get to talk to you in person.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

It's great to have a chance to talk to you and um look forward to continuing the conversation over the years. So thanks for joining us and to our listeners, thanks for joining us. You've been listening to my conversation with Dr. John Wood, the provost chief academic officer at the University of Phoenix, who's celebrating its 50th anniversary, 50 years of serving working learners and innovating for working learners. So thanks for joining us, everybody. If you're watching us on YouTube, please hit subscribe, continue to follow us. And if you're listening to us on your favorite audio podcast platform, download this episode, hit subscribe, and continue to follow us. Thanks for joining us, everybody, and we will see you all soon.