Ushering in a New Era of Education with Pierre Dubuc

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Welcome to the Future of Education.

And now here's your host, Michael Horn.

Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn and do we have a conversation for you today. Open Classrooms is, in my mind at least one of the few education companies that has clearly positioned itself as a disruptive innovation in the market. It's a French based company and it offers everything from free to degree based online courses and job areas really direct to students to help them advance in their lives, but also a range of programs that they offer directly to employers themselves to help them with all of their education and upskilling needs. All of these programs are also low cost in many cases. They're also, as I said up front, free. And they also have a healthy dosage of good instructional design to boot in them. This isn't just stuff that's been created by faculty who perhaps don't know the latest research behind teaching and learning. They have done a really good job of being thoughtful about the education side of this and the business model side of it. It's CEO and co founder Pierre Dubuc has been at this since he was, I believe, a university student some 15 years ago or so. And today he joins us on the Future of Education. Pierre, welcome. It's been a while, I think, since we were last in person together, walking and talking on the streets of New York City.

Holy. Hi Michael. I would love to do that again. It's been a while indeed and it was a very good introduction. Thanks for explaining what Open Classrooms is about. It's about features. 15 years. I started this business with my co founder Matthieu when we were in school creating free courses to have some friends learn coding. So this is how we got started.

You got started with the coding, but like in your words, how do you describe what Open Classrooms is now? Take away the Michael Horn version of it. Like when you meet someone else on the streets of New York City, what do you say you do and you've created?

I have to say it was a really good version though, so I would definitely reuse it. But what I say is first of all that Open Classrooms is what we call a mission driven company. It's a B corp organization and the mission of Open Classrooms is to make education accessible, especially education leading to jobs. So the social impact that we're tracking and reporting on is the number of what we call career outcomes, otherwise known as job placement. Basically it's like the number of students we place in the workforce, either for a first job, for a new job, switching careers, getting promoted Creating your own business. But it's a really significant carrier impact. This is what we're trying to build and it can be in the form of a free course, it can be in a form of a degree program much longer, an apprenticeship, upscale. So it can take various forms at different ages. But overall the outcome would be career impact.

It's interesting, you guild Education, a few other companies like you all are basically redefining what is the measurement of success. It's not just completing a degree program, it's not just learning a few concepts, it's really being able to use that and get ahead in the career marketplace. Just give us a sense of the scope of size and success you've had. When you look at it, how many learners you serve and how many placements are you having into careers?

Yeah, totally. So this year we will probably place between 40 to 50,000 students in the workforce. Last year it was about 15,000, the year before it was 4,000. So it gives you kind of a sense of also our growth trajectory at open classrooms. Then the way we do it can be through free courses or certificate programs or degree programs or apprenticeship programs. And we are, you might have started you. We are a non traditional college ourselves which is kind of a unique positioning because we do have our own degree awarding powers in Europe. So we have our own faculty, non traditional faculty, let's say industry practitioners, building the content, learning designer, the platform and all of that. So we really recreated the world courage experience in a way that is more modern and more aligned to employers needs and career needs. So we built all of this. And on degree programs we have about 10,000 students. On non degree programs like free courses or certificate programs, we train about 3, 300,000 students per month. Wow.

So that's a lot of size, incredible placement, that 40 to 50,000 number. I'm curious. And you said an important thing that you're accredited, which really stands out, you know, apart from a lot of the players in this space. I'm curious from your perspective, looking back at when you started the business in 2007, what were the couple big insights in your mind that really allowed you to have the success that you've had and the scale that you've had and you know, be able to offer degrees in this low cost way, but also all the way to these free programs of 300,000 learners. Now what were those couple big insights in your mind that really unlocked this?

At first we created online courses, the courses we wish we had in school. And Mike founder Mathieu is really talented at building amazing Courses like his pedagogy, the way he writes, the way takes you from A to Z, is very accessible, is funny, it's a really good call. So that's what really drove blocks of learners onto the platform. It was for free because it was not a business. Back in the day. We started that really as a hobby and many students and colleagues and peers from all over the world started learning coding through open classrooms in French speaking countries mostly. So we became the reference platform to learn coding. And we had many students and through word of mouth mostly, and at some point we realized many of them actually told us, you know what I got, I graduated, I've got a bachelor's in computer science. But all I've learned was thanks to you guys through your website. Like I learned nearly nothing through my school or my college or my university. I learned everything on your website. I know it was fulfilling and clearly we had an impact. But at some point we realized that many, many of them actually told us, you know what, I'm still a student at my college because I need a degree, I needed to find a job to like signal the market and I have the skills I have. And at first we didn't really realize this, but after a few years we thought, but if we do the heavy lifting, you know, why can't we actually give a degree at the end? And this is when we started to try and become accredited in France. And at this time we became the very first fully online college. So the first accredited online college. And we managed to get there and we started to award degrees in a very non traditional manner, if you will, because it's based on skills, on projects with one on one. Mentorship is fully online. It's a mix of synchronous and asynchronous support, human based, really high touch group and social learning as well, and still leading to a degree at the associate bachelor's and master's level.

It's just an incredible story. I mean in many ways you're one of the original boot camps, but online and then you become right, and then you've moved up market, if you will, into this accredited degree space and you're then one of the few success stories, I think worldwide of a new entrant in that university space that is often designed to keep those new entrants out. But you actually have changed that dynamic and now as I understand it, you're moving into a new phase from just being a course and in some cases this accredited degree provider to actually integrating far more into the world of apprenticeships. Themselves, apprenticeships are becoming a hot topic. Tell us more about what your plans are and why you're moving in this direction.

Yeah, no, definitely. So we started apprenticeship programs in Europe about five years ago. We became a pretty big apprenticeship provider. We do apprenticeship on about 30 different jobs at the associate bachelor's and master's level. We do a lot of what we would call degree apprenticeships. So apprenticeship leading to degrees. And then 18 months ago, I relocated personally to New York City to really. Exactly. It's actually, it's been an amazing journey. So I love it also from a personal standpoint. So it's been great. But I did that because I was willing to invest more time in the States building accreditation. But also this new product that is a partnership and trying to, let's say monetize or bring European style vision of what apprenticeship means. Because the apprenticeship is pretty major in Europe. But I would say in the States it's been more like old fashioned in a way, more focused on trade jobs on lower level of qualification, not really on college degrees. So more like blue collar jobs. You can become an electrician, a carpenter, but it's pretty hard to have a master's degree in data science through apprenticeship, which is something highly doable in Europe now. And that drove really a huge growth in the number of apprentices in Europe. So this is what we're trying to do. So we started to become registered with the U.S. department of labor to offer registered apprenticeship programs that are 12 months long. So it's a walk and study program. That means that you have a work contract from day one of your apprenticeship program. So you're employed by an organization, a public or private employer, you're going to work for four days away. So it's called on the job training. Four days away. And then you're going to be trained by open classrooms for one day a week, trained online with one on one mentorship via video conference. You have projects to complete, courses and other appliances and students you're going to collaborate with. And then for 50 weeks, for 12 months, you're going to have a mentorship session every week you will validate skills for projects and then you'll get to a certificate of completion by the usdol. It maps against TARS credits. So we do not have our own accreditation in the States yet. I mentioned the accreditations in Europe. We're building that also in the States, so it's clearly our intent. But right now what we do is we have tarnished credit transfer agreements with other universities. For example, with UMass and UMass recognizes our programs and basically grants credits to our graduates. So the important thing here is that under an apprentice program, you have a work contract and you're paid while you learn. So that means that not only you don't have to pay any tuition fees, no debt, nothing to pay or pay back ever, but you actually receive wages from day one of your program. And those wages increase over time and typically on our jobs. So mostly tech and digital jobs would be your core focus. You're going to be paid between 20 to $30 an hour and you're going to probably end up being around 40 to $50 an hour. So really quality jobs and you're paid while learning.

I mean, it makes a ton of sense. Right? You're starting to deal with really one of the reasons people often drop out of online degree programs or hesitate to go in the first place, which isn't actually the cost of the program, it's the opportunity cost of what am I foregoing in my life and how does it integrate with all these other demands and expectations? Right. It's not just monetary, it's in terms of my time management and things of that nature. And so the apprenticeship you designed tackles a lot of those. I'm curious, what's the demand look like from on the employer side? What are you finding in the market? Because as you said, this is a concept that's well understood in Europe outside of the trades in the United States, not historically the case. So what are you learning about demand? How are you educating the market?

Very good question. So clearly it's still a nascent market in the States, so we need to educate employers, organizations and also people. I think this change, this transition actually happened about five to 10 years ago in Europe, but 20 years ago it was the same thing in Europe. Apprenticeship was mostly for trade jobs and blue collar workers.

That's interesting.

I didn't know that that changed over time. And when I studied some time ago, I won't tell you how many years, but it's been some time. Actually it doesn't look this way, but it's been some time. There was no apprenticeship at my college and I studied engineering and graduated master's. So kind of, you know, somehow like tier one, you know, colleges in France, no apprenticeship there. Now it's about 30% of their students under apprenticeship. Wow. Nearly.

That's a sea change.

Yes, it's a C change. That means that you have a significant portion of an age group going through apprenticeship even for, even for elite education, so called like Ivy League type universities and colleges. So that that's really a big challenge. So we think that this momentum is building up in the States right now. So why. So first there is a huge demand from employers in terms of talent shortage. Okay, we need more developers, we need more data scientists, we need more cybersecurity experts, we need more of many different highly qualified jobs. And this shortage is just growing and growing. So that's one, it's the shortage. The second one is a diversity issue. We have massive diversity issues in those areas and jobs. So we need to obviously have less just white people working on tech jobs, but also Asian and black and other non white minorities. And we need to shout that apprenticeship is really tapping into new talent pools and will enable employers to build talent pipelines that are more diverse and that will close the skills gap. So it's a great solution basically to tackle both the shortage and the diversity issue.

Super interesting. Now I'm curious. One of the big conversations we've seen in the United States is that people say, well in Europe they have this thing as an intermediary. So basically employers don't want to take the risk of hiring these individuals themselves. And so you need some sort of intermediary to come along, take that risk. On do the, you know, the higher train deploy, as our friend Ryan Craig would call it, and then ideally they transition into a full time employee role at the employer. Are you seeing that need for that intermediary in the United States? Are you playing that role or who is playing that role for you if it's not you?

Good questions. I think there are different components actually, and not just the one you mentioned, but it is clearly a relevant one. Usually you have the training provider, so really the teaching part of things, that's one you have the matchmaking which is really finding applicants and candidates, pre screening them, finding employers and trying to do this matchmaking process, which is kind of a recruitment process, if you will, and somewhat also career coaching for candidates because maybe we all never had experiences previously in tech talking to employers. You need to coach them a bit. That's the matchmaking. Then potentially you need also this higher and trained model. So it's more of a staffing company type of model. You hire this apprentice, you train them at the same time and you bill an employer as a contractor, basically. So those are different things. I think mostly you will find you will always need the training component, you will always need the matchmaking. The staffing component is not required all the time. So sometimes you will need it, sometimes you will not. We do not do it. We partner for example, with upro, so part of Europe. And UPRO does that for us. So we also collaborate with major staffing companies doing that for us. But we do all of the rest. We do the training, we do the matchmaking. We are technically also a sponsor and an intermediary reporting to the USDOL on behalf of the employer. So we do everything else but staffing because we think staffing is a very specific component and we partner on that front.

And just to stay with it for one moment, then the matchmaking piece that you're doing in terms of helping people find the right employers or pathways or whatever it might be, that's the use case where you're working with an intermediary and you're trying to help place that individual into the right employee that might, might be the right fit. Or does it take on a different dimension even?

Yeah, actually you have, depending on markets, you could have two types of apprenticeship, what we would call refer as student led or employer led. Because at the end of the day you need an apprenticeship provider, an employer and apprentice. So it's a three way contract. So you could start from the employer side. It is typically the case in the States, but in other more mature apprenticeship markets you can start from the student side. So student led apprenticeship, meaning you have a candidate willing to do an apprenticeship in data science and they're going to actually apply several employers to try and find an employer to find a job basically. So it's a job. So they apply for a job as an apprentice and they're going to find an apprenticeship contract. So they might come back to you and say, oh, actually I found an apprenticeship contract in this small business nearby that we open classrooms, have never talked to. And then you can work with this employer and build a contract, sign it and then deliver on it. So that's student led. Employer led is you start from the employer side. Obviously usually that would be a larger organization, kind of a Fortune 500 type if you will, but not only. We can also collaborate obviously on smaller scales just for one or two apprentices. And then this employer will say, okay, I need to hire a cyber security expert or digital marketing specialist. And then we'll find candidates and pre qualify those candidates for them and then send them those profiles. They're going to interview them, select the one they like and then we'll sign the contract and deliver on it.

Super interesting. Okay, last quick question about this apprenticeship side of how we unleash this marketplace, which is some people are the view that we really need policy changes to unleash this in the United States and some people are the view this is happening like the demand is clear enough, the supply imbalance is clear enough, Employers need to make this happen. What's your view as you've started to come into this market in the United States? Do we need policy change? What are those policy changes, if so, or is this a problem that is being worked out by employers, organizations like yours and so forth, that you all got this in hand?

Good question. I would say it is definitely challenging and the core figure of this challenge is really the employer's demand. If you have employers demand, it's going to change. So there is that. It starts with employers demand and you need to expand, plan and educate employers around apprenticeship. That's one. That being said, with proper public policy you can accelerate the charge. I do think that there is room to accelerate this change as we've seen actually in Europe, where many markets change policies. In the UK with the apprenticeship levy in France as well, in 2018 and 2020, we've seen public policy changes and just to cite precise examples of what we've seen, move the needle. So first of all in the States, the funding and the support that employers get to pay for both the salary of the wages of apprentices and also what we would call the related training instruction, the RTI part of the training, training cost. This funding is grant based or it's a tax credit, meaning that maybe you need to bid. First of all, those are RFPs and grant programs you need to bid. Then maybe it's a yes, maybe it's a no and maybe it's there. Maybe next year it's not there and it's local. You work with workforce development boards or maybe state agencies. It's quite complex to be honest, especially if you start operating as scale in different states. So it's hard to scale the way it's structured right now. What we've seen working in Europe is it was the same in France, it was regional and grant based. They switch it to a national funding scheme that is a formula based funding, meaning you hire an apprentice, you get paid that much, you hire two apprentices, you get pay twice much, etc. Etc. And it's uncapped. That means the more apprentices you hire, the more money you get. But it's very explicit and kind of automatic, if you will, so you know what to expect and it's there to stay. It's not a grand or RFP process, so that's one. And then they realigned also interest because they pay that not only if you sign the contract, they pay 30% upfront when you sign the contract. And then they pay based on the apprentice progress, meaning they need to complete the program. Right. Because otherwise you can pay upfront and then if they churn or if they don't complete for whatever reason, then frankly it's not interest, are not online. So you need to pay, pay accordingly, align to the progress and pay until the very end of the apprenticeship contract. I think that's very important to align payment terms to student progress. Then they started tracking also student outcomes in the form of graduation rates, but also job placement rates, how many of them after completion will actually be employed full time as a permanent employee in the company or in other companies. So that's very important to track student outcomes and then finally to market this to the general public, employers, public policymakers and so on. And you've seen actually many governments running large scale advertising campaigns in favor of apprenticeship to showcase apprentices, both to employers and apprentices and families as well, to move the needle. I think now saying that you can get a master's degree, a bachelor's degree from a very top pool in a country, I mean clearly that is a strong signal that apprenticeship is high quality, is really something that can be desirable. So the marketing of it is also something where public policymakers can help.

Incredibly helpful. I love. Not only obviously does certainty breed more confidence from businesses to act obviously. And getting a consistent funding formula that scales seems critical to that. But then also the other piece you said in terms of measuring progress and being focused on those outcomes, theoretically, actually that could move us away from a seat time based system to competency based as students make progress in their learning journey, which would be even better in terms of revolutionizing higher ed in our workforce education system. Last two questions as we start to wrap up here. You also have done a lot of work to get on the state and local workforce board lists, I understand, so that you're able to start to move workforce federal money in this country, not just federal financial aid perhaps, or other mechanisms like that, why is that important in this evolving vision and how does it fit with the strategy?

I think it's really back to this public policy issue because if you have employers willing to hire say 100 apprentices next year, if you can find public support, public funding so they can scale that program not to 100, but to 150, then clearly this is something we should explore. And again, we've seen that work in other countries, especially in Europe, where our partnership is pretty big. So this public funding Component I think will be key to really accelerate the market. It's getting there anyway, but it can get there faster. We're starting to walk with state agencies and workforce development boards. So at county level, we are on the eligible training provider list in about 40 states approximately with our apprenticeship program. So that means that we can apply for funding to help our partner employers to scale their apprenticeship program. So that's really the intent there. But again, right now the system is very scattered and different from one ball to the other, from one state to the other. Other criteria and the different, the funding, the threshold criteria, the requirements and so on are different. So obviously over time, public policy might change and might get better alignment to help us scale better. But it is part of the process. You need to start working with a few balls in a few states. Some states also maybe more forward looking, more innovative, a bit more flexible in how they can allocate funding. And you see actually for example, the state of California, which has doubled their apprenticeship budget for 2023 roughly. And they're willing, they're thinking of moving into this formula based like paper apprentice vision. So it's interesting, if you start having California doing it, why not New York state? And then from there a bunch of major states might shipping as well. So we're really at this tipping point is really interesting to witness and that's why we open the conversation with state agencies and workforce boss to say, okay, this is what we do. Those are the employers we work with, from Merck to Amazon and many others. Is it something that you like to see more of in your state? And how, how can you help us scale those operations?

It's fascinating. You're probably one of the few, if only online providers at scale, online providers that's worked with that many local workforce boards. So it's just, it's helpful to understand why and I suspect those listening will take a cue. But last question as we wrap up here. How do you see this future playing out for apprenticeships as it pertains to open classrooms, but also more broadly for the sector as a whole? Like we come back in five years from now on this broadcast or we're walking the streets of New York City again and we're talking about how the future has unfolded? What's your sort of sense for what this landscape is going to look like in five years from now in the United States?

I think two things. One is the number of hypotheses. At the end of the day, if there is a sea charge, you need to see the number of apprentices Grow tremendously. And right now we have about 400,000 apprentices in the States, which is very low to compare it, for example, to France. Right now, France has about 1 million apprentices in a country that's five times smaller. So in the States, that would mean something like 5 million apprentices to compare it to. So I would like to come back to you. And while we are walking in the streets of New York City, say now we have maybe like a million apprentices in the country and with a better gender balance, because right now apprentices in this country are mostly men, mostly white, and mostly in trade jobs like truck drivers or carpenters and construction jobs. I would like to see more gender balance, more highly qualified jobs, for example, in tech, it, cyber and all the jobs maybe in healthcare. And I would like to see apprenticeship more connected to higher education because obviously there is a huge issue around higher ed in the States, around student debt and so on. And I think there is a way to solve both the skills gap, the talent shortage and this higher education issue that we have by creating degree apprenticeship and linking apprenticeship to college education in one way. Maybe actually the way we're going to found apprenticeship will not be necessarily only through workforce development boards, but it could be through something as systemic as Title four in the future. So we could imagine that because that partnership works really well in terms of employability, in terms of completion rates. So it's a great outcome for the country. And if we think this way, maybe we should actually invest much, much more on apprenticeship in a comparable fashion as how much we spend on higher ed right now through Title fall.

Well, it is one of the few, I think, dare I say, bright spots or hopeful spots right now in the sector of education, broadly speaking, From K through 12 through higher education, through education upskilling and lifelong learning. This is one of the few bright spots that starts to bring a lot of strands together. Pierre, keep up the great work. Thank you so much for joining us. And thanks to all of you for joining us. We'll be back next time on the Future of Education.