In this episode of the My First Million podcast, Sam Parr and his co‑host explore the concept of corporate universities—internal education programs that companies use to train and recruit talent. They cite several examples: Hamburger University (McDonald’s) with 19 full‑time professors, GE’s Crotonville, Kaiser’s new medical school, Apple University, Deloitte University, and Zoho University, whose graduates now comprise about 15% of Zoho’s workforce. They also mention the massive scale of external programs like Google’s IT Support Certificate, which has produced 75,000 graduates. Parr argues that this is a growing trend and sees a business opportunity: companies such as 2U have built a model where they partner with traditional universities to create and run online degree programs for a revenue share. He suggests a similar model could be applied to corporations, offering branded bootcamps or “corporate universities” that produce a pipeline of talent, with the provider handling curriculum, technology, recruitment, and taking a recruiter fee. The discussion is conversational and enthusiastic, highlighting both the scale of existing programs and the potential for new ventures in corporate education.
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Zoho. So Zoho has their own university and the graduates of that make up 15% of their workforce. Oh shit. Uh, which is pretty insane.
So 100, they have about 1,000, maybe they have more than 1,000 people.
Uh, so first follow up on, uh, last time I was talking about corporate universities. Um, I'm gonna keep talking about anything education cuz I just love it.
I had a lot of people reach out to me about that.
Really? Okay. So I, I, I went back to my notes. I already had these notes. Uh, but I just wanted to mention a couple of 'em. So Hamburger U, that's the McDonald's one. 19 full-time professors. I thought that was interesting. Um, there's, uh, I don't know how you say this, Crotonville. That's from General Electric. So Kaiser just opened up their own med school, which I find really interesting because it's what— that's exactly what I was talking about where you want your own pipeline of doctors, so you create your own med school. Um, then some companies do it more like training. Apple University, Deloitte University. I think those are more like just a training program so you could be a better employee. That's, that's different. Um, another one that I thought was interesting. So we talked about Zoho. So Zoho has their own university and the graduates of that make up 15% of their workforce.
Oh shit.
Uh, which is pretty insane.
So 100, they have about 1,000, maybe they have more than 1,000 people.
I'm not sure exactly how many total that is. Um, the Google IT support certificate has 75,000 graduated students, uh, which is pretty crazy. Um, so I think this is going to be a big trend.
So where's the opportunity to be a company that can create these education?
So I think what you can do is, so there's these companies that are called, what the hell are they called? Uh, I know one is called 2U or something like that. That's the name of one of their companies. So there's a set of companies that what they're doing is they say, hey, university, hey, Berkeley, you should have an online degree. And for years, universities were not so interested in this. And then they saw how much money gets made by online degrees. And so they were like, okay, we'll take that money. And so they don't want to, you know, Berkeley doesn't want to have to sit there and build out an online degree portal that has like the technology, the service, acquire students. Like Berkeley doesn't know how to do any of that shit. Right? So these, there's a couple, there's 3 big companies that basically go to these universities and they say, hey, do you want to offer an online degree? We think it brings this much incremental revenue to your university. And, um, we will run the whole thing for you so you don't have to lift a finger. And here's the— but we want, you know, 30% of the tuition revenue. And right. So what happened is all the universities said yes. So there's a billion-dollar company that's doing this that basically offers this to all the universities. So if you go look, all these, you know, traditional universities now have an online degree or certificate, like certificate program that they offer. And it's run by these other companies. I forgot the name of what these companies are called. It was like some generic term. But I think you could be that for corporations. And so, um, I think you could go to a corporation and say, hey, would you like to basically have your own, you know, developer bootcamp or, um, university for, you know, essentially we're gonna pop out people who are like management consultant types. And, uh, it's good for your brand to, to get students early. And anytime you hire one of them, we take essentially a recruiter fee and we'll run the whole thing for you. And so I think that's one way you could. Take advantage of this trend.
