August 5, 2025 • 32 mins
Ep. 227 Tade Oyerinde is Chancellor at Campus.edu. Campus is on a mission to maximize access to a world-class education. A new kind of college, Campus offers accredited, career-focused degree programs to kickstart your education.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We'll look to see a black tech, green money. It's
so good to be with you guys again, bringing you
another remarkable founder here today. Or your Ende is an
education entrepreneur serving as chancellor at Campus Edu. More than
a decade of experience using technology to solve a variety
of challenges in the higher education system. Campus is on
(00:20):
a mission to maximize access to world class education. It's
a new kind of college. Campus offers accredited career focused
degree programs to kickstart your education. These are professors who
also teach at top ranked colleges. They provide live classes.
It's fully online.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Welcome today, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Will absolutely thank you for being here and in advance
like thank you for what you do. We've had so
many conversations in our social discourse about like access to
really high quality education. How do you define world class
education and what does it mean in a community college context?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, to me, world class education is first about helping
students identify what is my purpose? What did God or
as gen Z likes to say, in the universe put
me on this planet to go do? Which we define
specifically as what's at the intersection of what you're good at?
You know, something that's always just come a little bit
easier to you than for other people. What you're passionate
(01:26):
about and what the world is willing to pay you for,
that's your purpose. The first thing we do is we
help students define that, understand that, and a lot of
times they have no idea the full menu of options,
so we expand their the consciousness in that way, and
then we help you get the skills and the knowledge
and the network to make that purpose your life's work.
And so that's what world class education means for us
(01:47):
on campus specifically, you know, you got to inspire the students,
and so we hire all of our faculty as part
time instructions instructors with us. They're also full time instructors
at other top fifty universities in the country Princeton, Stanford,
Howard Morehouse. These are great schools, and it's not just
because they're great and really intelligent faculty, but it's also
(02:08):
because they have a unique ability to inspire students. And
so that's what it's really about. It's about helping students
identify the purpose, inspiring them to believe in themselves, and
then getting them the skills, the network and the knowledge
to make their purpose, their life's work.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So getting in the door at a university or a
college is one thing. Getting access is one thing. Completing
is a completely separate thing. What systemically do you find
is responsible for low completion rates in our community?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, I mean it's there's certainly several factors. I think
It's like, in some level, part of this is like
a gym membership. It's like everybody wants to be the
kind of person who goes to the gym. That's how
they get a membership. But sometimes actually leveraging using that
gym membership consistently putting in the work is a lot
is a lot more challenging. And sometimes you sign up
(03:00):
and you know you're feeling pumped, but actually keeping that
motivation all the way through is a challenge. And so
that's I think a big part of it. And then
life gets in the way. You know, education at the
college level is a multi year investment, and you know
a lot of folks struggle to make medium and long
term strategies as opposed to just optimizing for the short term.
(03:21):
And so a typical thing we see a lot of
two year college students in particular, who are you know,
eighty percent of whom are working whilst in school? Is
is this? You know, students will be working at Chipotle
and it works with the class times, but then you
know Walmart offers them an additional one dollar an hour
and they drop out of school to go take that
new job, and it's like, you know, our job as
(03:42):
educators have to be to remind them no, No, hey,
student will like, what what did you tell me on
first day at orientation? You told me you want to
be X. You want to make this dream come true?
Is leaving Chipotle for Walmart for one more dollar an
hour and dropping out of school going to get you
closer to or fur? They're from your own stated career
and life goal. And then you have to remind the
students of that. And then what you'll see is when
(04:04):
you just have somebody there to do that over and
over and over, the students will actually get it and
they'll they'll make the right choices. So what we do
is we make sure that for every fifty students when
rolls at campus, there's a success coach who is there
to do that. This is not just an academic advisor
who's there to tell you a classes take. No, it's
like this person is paid, like their literal job is
(04:24):
to make sure that all fifty of that their kids graduate,
and so they're constantly you know, kind of like my
Nigerian mom. They'll kick your ass when you're slacking, you know,
and they'll be a shoulder to cry on when you
get knocked down and otherwise support you all the way
to graduation. You know.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
How do you reconsider the role or reimagine the role
of faculty compared to traditional institutions.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, I mean I think, as I said, like to start,
faculty have to inspire, so we don't hire you know, boring,
you know, like just like you know, like uninspirational faculty,
we like to get it. To get hired at CA,
yes he has to be it from a top reputable institution,
but also to be charismatic, engaging, exciting. You used to
be passionate about what you're teaching because students can you know,
(05:09):
they can feed off of that and it actually ends
up inspiring and motivating them and then improving their outcomes.
So to me, that's certainly one way in which our
faculty are better than the average faculty, even at elite
universities across the country. Thing Number two is our faculty
tend to genuinely want to teach. In a lot of universities,
many of the faculty they want to do research, right,
(05:30):
they don't actually want to teach. They have to teach.
In some cases, maybe they know they're on the path
for tenure and so they have to do whatever is
going to help them get you that tenure track job
or get tenured, and so they were fired to teach.
But we actually only hire faculty who want to teach.
They're not doing research, you know, they're not trying to
get tenure. They're just here because they love teaching. And
(05:52):
so I think those are the probably two things that
our faculty do that distinguish them from I think faculty
even other top universities.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
You know, I think about you know when I see
you know, smart, intelligent, passionate people like you, and I
guess my question is, like you could have done a
lot of things with your skill and ambition. Why did
you choose education to work on?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Uh naivete accidentally and Bratton Washington, So I think, uh,
you know, when you're a kid, you don't realize these things,
but now looking back, it's kind of obvious. You know,
my my paternal grandfather was a college dean. My maternal
grandfather was a high school principal. My mother got a
(06:39):
PhD in education, homeschooled my siblings and me and uh
and then and then it became a college dean, and
my older sister, you know, as a professor. My father
started a nursing school. And when we were when I
was twelve and sort of, you know, my brother and
I used to go around and pass up flyers to
all the churches Sunday morning and get able to go
(07:00):
to the nursing school. So, you know, I think sort
of in hindsight, you know, everything was like kind of
forcing me to think about education my entire life. And
my mother in particular used my brother and I as
and my older sister. But my brother and I are
identical twins, So I think it was an interesting sort
of a b test as sort of guinea pig. It's
for different pedagogical learning, modality, is different learning techniques, space
(07:23):
reputation of things like this, and so I guess I've
always sort of been brainwashed at a deep level to
think about how then education work, how can it be better,
how can we make it work for more people? And
so I think that's probably deep in my core, and
I think the accidental bit is just you know, I really,
you know, I didn't plan to be an education entrepreneur
to work in this space. I actually went to university
(07:45):
to study aerospace engineering. I started flying planes. I was
going to be a pilot when I was twelve, So
that was my plan. And you know, and then, you know,
I think, what's what's the quote, everyone's got a plan
into their punch in the face or something like that's
how these things go.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah, you talked about your previous and just now you
talked about your previous track, like where you thought you
were going to be, you know, lending your talents, but
you're now leading a company, no organization, you know, an effort.
How did you learn to lead and particularly lead people
and lead teams? Like how did you learn to not
(08:23):
you know, theoretically, but to actually bring to people together
for a common purpose with their agent.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah, that's a great question. I'm not sure that i've
I don't I don't think I've mastered leadership. Quite frankly,
I'm not passionate about, you know, just leading in an
abstract sense. I'm passionate about solving this problem for our country.
I think, you know, a lot of people think about
education and like an oh education kind of way. I
(08:51):
sort of think about it, if you know what I mean.
I think about it almost as like an existential problem
for the country to solve. You know. I think America
is like we've sold our country rightfully as the land
of opportunity, and it's it's supposed to be a place
where it doesn't matter how you were born or the
conditions of your birth economically, you know, parentally, if you
(09:15):
work hard, you put in the work, you're going to
be able to build a great life here. And I
think over the last thirty forty years, that's just I
think a lot of people feel that's just not true anymore.
And I think a big part of that is the
student loan crisis. I mean, kids are graduating today, you know,
two hundred k in debt. You're starting life in the
(09:36):
red negative two hundred k, and then you can just
from the next decade plus climbing out. You can't buy
a home. You feel like you can't afford to take
any risks like start a business. You know, many people,
like a lot of my age man's are saying they
don't feel like they can have more than one kid,
if any kids at all, because it can afford them.
I think it's an absolute crisis. I think we, you know,
we have to actually solve this. People have to be
able to get a home, you know, by twenty seven
(09:57):
twenty eight. If you're working hard, like you should to
buy a home, right, you shouldn't have any debt to
get a great education, to launch your career. So like
to me, this is what inspires me, and this is
what I get up every single day trying to solve
This is what I spent my twenties and I will
spend all my thirties tackling at least. And so I
don't think I have formal leadership training in any traditional sense.
(10:19):
I think people I found that. I think some of
the smartest, most hard working people are tracktled to passion,
and I think that's why people join campus. You know,
about three hundred people today, and I think they're attracted
with my passion. They know it's genuine, they know that
I'm obsessed with this issue. I think people people are
attracted to people who are really, really freaking passionate, and
(10:40):
they want to work with people who are true believers,
And so I think that's that's what enables me a big,
good leader. I don't think that I'm necessarily qualified to like,
you know, lead you know, a sports team, like I
don't know that I could be, you know, the coach
of the you know, Atlanta Falcons, Like I used to
love football a lot. You know, I still like it,
you know, but it's not like I'm not going to
(11:01):
come out there every single day, day in day out
like coach Saban would or something like that, motivating the guiles,
because that's not my passion. But I can lead people
to go and solve this big problem for our country
and education and access to world class education because people
can literally see that, you know, I care about this
more than most people care about anything. So so I
think that's, yeah, that's how I think about leadership.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, I mean, in starting a company, an organization and
institution in this respect, like you know, particularly because you
weren't setting out on a journey to be a founder
or an entrepreneur, at what point did you realize or
at what happened that made you realize like, oh crap,
Like I'm the CEO, Like I'm the chancellor, like whether
(11:42):
or not we keep going to stop is on me. Like,
what happened when that moment hits you?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, you know, I think that's a good question. Like
in the very like in the first four years of
the company, it was like kind of just me and
the homies. Yeah, I was just recruiting, you know, friends
of friends. You know, people are known through the internet
to work on building software. We started originally just building
the online learning software. I think the moment where I
(12:11):
realized no, no, like on top of actually doing things,
there is like a specific leadership role. I think that
moment was when we bought we acquired this college in Sacramento.
It was called MTI College, and you know, it was
the first time, you know, I'd really sat down with
folks who dedicated thirty years their life to something that
(12:33):
are people who'd worked at MTI College for more than
thirty years, and I had to explain them my vision
and why I thought, you know, campus and rebranding the
institution is campus. And you know, we thinking the way
we were executing on certain strategies, you know, keeping the
same original mission but executing a completely completely different strategy
was the right thing for the institution. And that was
(12:54):
when I was like, Okay, there's a real job here
to motivate, to inspire my staff and to lead them
and to sort of be the kind of person that
they want to follow. Prior to that, it was like, yo, guys,
we just got to get this shit out, like let's build. No, no, no,
professors are using the software. The complaining is buggy. You know,
we can't have it. You know. It was just like
putting out buyers left and right with the passion. I think,
(13:18):
you know, after we acquire the college, it was like,
there's actually like a real responsibility to be a leader,
not just not just a person who's who's pushing everything
with pure passion.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
You know what, I'm curious on what excites you most
about the role AI can play in helping to scale
access to high quality education.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Well, you just said at scale to me is as
really cool. I'll give you an example. So, as I
said earlier, for every fifty students been a role, we
hire a success coach. This is somebody who is there
to motivate the student, who's there to be their point
of contact if the student has any issue, right with
the students feeling depressed, or if the students only with
any life issue. The coach is their first point of
(14:02):
contact to help them navigate whatever they're going through. And
so we hire We have the office in Atlanta. We
have over one hundred people there. Now there are Student
Impact Club and their job is to just work students
through all these issues between all these barriers around or
over these barriers between first day of classes and graduation.
And so when you have a lot of people, you know,
(14:26):
interacting with students, you're responsible as an institution for making
sure those interactions are positive. And now we're not just
a random bank. We call one eight hundred and then
we're going to have a brief survey on how you
to call it No no, Like we want this to be awesome.
So in sound brief survey, it's like we actually need
to be responsible for making sure every single person on
the phone with students, interacturate students, is ready to go.
(14:47):
And so you know, we have a person who just
used to listen to ten percent of all interactions with
students and just grade them and then get feedback or
god fit, something bad happen, escalate that, but generally it's like,
you know, giving feedback and helping these student impact people
be better at their work. Now AI can do it
in a way that's more privacy preserving and more efficient
and cheaper and better. So it's just it's like, Okay,
(15:10):
you can just send a transcript of a call to
an LM if there was a flagged issue, you know,
profanity was used or whatever whatever. You know, you have
a list of things you check for, then a human
actually looks at it. If not, then no human ever
sees it. So you're improving privacy and then you can
scale that up. We're doing it now for all of
our interactions, whereas we could only do it for five
to fifteen percent usually around ten percent of interactions before.
(15:32):
So I think AI can make us way more efficient
at enhancing the quality of our services number one. Number
two is AI should be able to do things that
computers are good at and humans hate doing, and let
humans do things that humans are great at doing and
computers can't do. So. For example, again with our faculty,
I've said it twice already, their job is to inspire.
(15:54):
Do professors from Princeton love inspiring students about what they're
passionate about, what they're area of expertises? Yeah? Do they
like grading homework repetitively. No, they don't. They don't like
grading homework repetitively. So okay, can can a professor set
a grading rubric that an AI executes and automates a
lot of the grading right, yes, for you can do
(16:16):
that a lot of times. And so there's so many processes.
For one example that AI will be able to do.
That will free up our people to spend more time
with students, like actually interfacing with students and not doing
back office processes. And then lastly, you know, I think,
I think. Yeah. The cool thing about campus. One of
the unique things about campus is it's a live online
(16:38):
learning experience. So you know, just like you and I
are meeting face to face, that's how our students meet
the faculty, you know, you know for twelve hours a week.
It's it's a lot of it's in tests. It's awesome.
Now that the annoying thing those that after class ends
right now, there's no yeah. Yeah, if you if you
get stuck on a problem you know you're working on
(16:58):
in your homework or you're setting for examine confused, you know,
maybe you have to wait for the next office hours
to show up or schedule tutoring session. That that could be
two days out with AI. I think we're going to
be able to in the next six to twelve months
have every single student have on demand world class tutoring,
on demand world class study body, you know, on demand
(17:18):
homework help. And I think that's going to be a
game changer for both our students and I think broadly
for higher education in general.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
You know, about ten years ago or so, there was
this big UnCollege movement where people started to challenge the
value of a college education. Yeah, and this was around
the time where I don't remember if we were coming
out or if we were going into like the mooks
like the massive open online college you know season that
we were in. And you know, people have my points,
(17:49):
like people have taken these sorts of challenges on before,
and either there's regulatory or bureaucratic or just pure like
success rate, Like there's there's reasons it hasn't worked in
trying to reimagine college and university experiences Like what do
you what do you have you faced as like the
biggest regulatory or bureaucratic reasons that you know cause challenges
(18:14):
to you know, O'Regan stations.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Like yours cost I'm gonna say, it's refreshing to talk
to a storyteller journalist who's gone that deep on the space.
It's really cool. Yeah, we're not the first, second, or
third to try and tackle, you know, the problem with
access to world class education in the country. I think
a lot of the prior efforts, and I studied all
of them before we got started with the campus, as
(18:36):
any wise person will do, in stalled largely in part
because they didn't have a thoughtful solution to the money problem.
And what that means is specifically outside of basically India
and China, the way that the higher education is largely
paid for is through state subsidies. The government subsizes or
(18:58):
outright pays for the vast majority of undergraduate education. But
the US and Europe that that's just that's the core model.
So if you don't have a way for students to
be able to take your programs through these you know,
state subsidies that they're entitled to by being Americans, Like
in our case, it's the Pelgrant. It's you know, it's
eleven thousand dollars a year for six years. It's a beautiful,
(19:21):
amazing asset that changes millions of lives every year. And
if you don't know how to access that, then your
you're on college or disruptive mook, whatever it is. Is
it not going to work. It's not going to be
successful because that's how most students could college. And so
we were very thoughtful about that from day one, you know,
I you know, our motto is fuc K student debt.
(19:43):
Like we did not want to add one I don't
know if I can curse here. We did not want to.
We did not want to add one dollar to the
pile of student loan debt in this country. And we haven't.
Of our about twenty six hundred students today, not a
single one of them. Right now, our online students has
taken one do a student loan debt. And that's that's
super key for me, you know. So it's all Pelgramt
(20:04):
funded or the students you know, pay out of pocket
if they're affluent and they can afford to do so.
And so basically that's the core. I think that you
know a lot of the people can before failed at
the second piece, that's about a little bit less core.
I think that a lot of folks failed at is
people want college degrees, like they just I think it's
like it's all these like these like Ivy League graduates
(20:27):
in Silicon Valley who don't know, regular people in Atlanta,
in Pittsburgh, you know, in Detroit, you know, in rural America,
like just regular people, and they're like, nobody wants college.
And it's like, pro are you kidding me? Like there's
millions of kids every year who would be the first
in their family to go to college, and they, you know,
they just want the pride of being able to say
I'm a college kid. First of all, I'm not even
(20:48):
a graduate. I'm just a college kid. You know, there's
a millions of kids in middle income high schools and
low income high schools all over the country who senior
year want to wear that hoodie of a college they
got admitted to, even if they're not even going. They
just want to wear. And these these Silicon Valley elites,
you know, they didn't necessarily understand that. You know, in
Silicon Valley, we have this myth of the you know,
(21:08):
the college dropout, of which I am one. I did
three years in aerospace and dropped out. But like so
I understand that, but like they have this myth of
the college drop but it's like Silicon Valley only invests
in college dropouts to drop out of elite schools, like
nobody's investing in the community college dropouts in Silicon Valley,
like you know, and so so. So college actually is
a really valuable thing, both in terms of the confidence
(21:32):
that it bestows upon the people who who complete it,
and and then of course the economic payoff. You know,
if you get a bachelor's degree, you're can to earn
a million dollars more over the coursier life than someone
who's just a high school diploma. If you get an
associate's degree, you're in a half a million more of
the coasher life. So Americans know this. Most people recognize this,
and and so they actually wanted agree. So what they
don't want is to debt. What they don't want is
(21:54):
the stupid, you know, nonsense theoretical education as opposed to practical,
real world skills. What they don't want is a system
that treats them like crap and says, oh, you're one
day late, drugster, Sorry, wait till next fall to start.
Like it's all these like really city, really silly, you know,
sort of idiosyncrasies in our higher education system that no
(22:16):
other service of this level of importance has. You know,
like you're telling me I can't take the class that
I need a graduate because it's full, so you can
make me take an extra semester just waiting around on
camp like the ridiculous stuff that students have to deal with,
and I think that's what folks actually don't want. And
so for us, it was like, how can we solve
the debt problem right so that students don't have to
(22:36):
take on loans? And that was by figuring out a
business model that worked where the tuition is priced below
the pelgrant Number one, number two, how do we make
sure the quality is excellent. You're not learning nonsense that
you know that's not actually going to prepare you to
be successful. You're learning crucial things. For example, if you're
taking our business classes, you're learning how to negotiate. I've
(22:56):
hired a lot of smart people out of the elite
schools in this country. If we're business majors, many of
them don't not negotiate. There's like a contractor here to
fix the window, and the contractor's shoying to negotiate and
they're being all friendly with them. I'm like this is
the contractor. He's going to take you for a ride.
You better take that small after face and africate about
to walk off the room. Like these are things that
the kid in the South side Chicago knows by age eleven.
(23:18):
You know. They know how to posture, they know how
to communicate with the body language and the tone, the
right things they need to communicate to get what they
need to get done done right that kids coming from
the elite business schools in this country may not even know.
And so campus graduates are equipped. If you're getting one
of my business graduates, good luck. If you're sitting acrossing
them on a negotiation table, they know how to read
your face, your body language, They're going to make you sweat, right,
(23:40):
And that's what you know. That's what high quality education
is about. That Sudent's actually looking for, not just theoretical nonsense,
practical skills. And then lastly, we treat students like customers.
They are paying customers. It's not sink or swim. It's
all up to you. No, no, no, How can we
help you be successful in life? How can we create
help you create the life that you want for yourself.
That's our entire approach to students. So if you need
(24:03):
a class to graduate, I don't care if you're the
only kid who needs it. We're hiring a professor to
teach that class. Right. If you need a laptop, great,
we give free laptops to seventy eight percent of our students. Cool,
we got it. If you need Wi Fi at home,
we give free Wi Fi to almost seventy percent of
our students, free WiFi the WiFi. Don't go t MOBILTI
(24:24):
friz them. Let's go, like, what do you need to
be successful? As our customer is our general approach. And
that's so I think when you solve those three things,
you know, when you solve the debt problem, when you
solve the quality problem, and he solved the like you know,
sort of customer centricness problem or central to the problem,
then I think actually everyone wants college. Who does want
to be a college kid? Who want to graduate? Let's
(24:45):
go yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Yeah, And part of the thing that would love for
you to touch on is, yeah, we don't want the debt.
We do want the degree, we do want the education,
but we also want like the university experience. And I wonder,
like you send your name campus like that being on
campus and being you know, fully remote like online, Like,
how do you bridge that gap? Because not only do
(25:08):
people go as you know, well know, not only do
I go to school to get educated, to get prepared
for the real world and et cetera in my work life,
but I also it's my first time out of my parents' house.
I'm starting to figure out who I am in the world.
I'm meeting people from around the world who I never
would have met otherwise, you know, talk to me about that.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Yeah, So campus is ultimately a trampline into the top.
You know, school students want to go to Morehouse UCLA
n y U, and so you can't make you know,
a more House man online. I just can't do it.
You know. My board chair is a former president of
Morehouse University, doctor John Wilson. Like, we talked about this
(25:52):
all the time. It's like the principles that we instill
in these young men, they do have to be there
on campus navigating all types of situations that are going
to help refine them in terms of building out their integrity,
refine them in terms of building out their sense of service.
You know, all these different things that you know, how
do you how do you instill these principles and there
(26:13):
does have to be an in person component. So campus
is just the first two years of college. Our vision
is and our students are coming to us because they
want to start a campus, take no debt in the
first two years, and then transfer. That's the cool thing
about campus versus all these other UnCollege mook type silly
ideas in the past. But they were not accredited colleges,
so you couldn't transfer. Great, you do two years on
(26:34):
course era start over you did? You know? You did
two years?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
You know on college? Okay, you're a freshman. No, no, no campus,
you do two years, you get your sociates degree, and
then we help you transfer into morehouse. Transfer transfer to
students into NYU. Have been admitted to n YU already,
transfer into UCLA and you're still going to get that
residential experience. So again to recap, you know, I think
live online is extremely crucial. It's helpful from an academic standpoint,
(27:00):
and that it enables the students actually do it from anywhere.
So you know, stay tuned. You will see that the
campus experience of being live online, we will actually take
advantage of the fact that it's live online and enhance
students experience for those first two years, you know, through
international through things that are possible in cities where we
have high concentrations of students like New York and Atlanta.
(27:21):
Number two, I think I think you know that transfer
is crucial. Is transfer super crucial? Start a campus and
then go to Morehouse, go to UCLA, go to n YU,
and then lastly, I'll say one more benefit that is
crucial to the learning experience being synchronous online is that
the best professors may not live in a neighborhood. So
(27:43):
what if what if you live in you know, Valdosta, Georgia,
there may not be the best professors in physics or
AI or whatever the specific thing you're passionate about learning is.
And so you shouldn't have to just learn the best
dude in Valdosta who may not be very good. You
should be able to learn from the best person period,
(28:06):
who could be in you know, Toledo or somewhere else
random across the country. So the campus doing the learning
online and enhances I think the average quality of the
instructors because you're not hied to anyone geography. But if
we can still get people together in a social setting
in real life, then I think you'll actually bridge the
gap on those things.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
That finally, you know, I'm interested in your thoughts on
you know, when you build something like this, you're not
necessarily or at least necessarily talking about building wealth for
yourself as a founder. Can you can work in other
sectors and talk about, you know, we're going to make
a bunch of money, we're going to exit at these numbers,
we're going to raise as much to go do that much,
(28:48):
and you know, talk about generational wealth. And my question
to you is, how do you think as a founder
about your opportunity to build wealth? Whow so do goodwile
doing good? And do you see that this could be
a billion dollar opportunity for you or like how how
do you think about it from a wealth generation for
(29:09):
a founder, not for the students, but for you.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah, I mean, look, it's I think the opportunity we're
going after is so absurdly large that if we're successful,
there's no way that you're not going to just build
a great you know, a great a great company. And
you know, if you own a meaningful piece of a
great company, then obviously wealth comes with that. So to me,
I think The mistake founders make when they're working in healthcare,
(29:34):
when they're working in education, you know, these industries where
the customers and the impact you're having on society has
to be the focus, is that they start thinking about
the wealth in like a sort of tangible, specific way.
I don't think you could think about it that way.
I think there's folks on solving this huge problem for society,
and if you do solve it, the wealth will take
(29:55):
care of itself. And so for me, that's the focus. Obviously.
I own, you know, a meaningful chunk of this thing.
You know, we have investors. You know, almost all of
our investors are already billionaires. You know Sam Oltman, Jason Citchron,
the founder of Discord, you know Michael Bloomberg and the
Bloomberg Ventures team. You know Dylanfield, founder of Figma. These
guys are not investing in campus to make more money.
(30:15):
You know, they're already billionaires. What are they gonna do
with more money? Buy another ping pong table? Like? That's
not that's not the goal here. The goal here is
to solve this massive problem for America. And then, of
course we all understand intuitively that if you do, you know,
make calling and texting over the internet super accessible WhatsApp,
or make it possible for people to rent out and
(30:37):
monetize the spare rooms in their house Airbnb, or connect
people you know, with various cars and drivers at a
cheaper than the rate of a taxi at the push
of the button on your phone. Uber that, of course you're
going to end up just accidentally, just as a function
of what the scale of the problem you solved creating
you know, creating and creating very well. And so three,
(30:58):
I don't think about it daily or a month or
quarterly or even probably not even annually. It's not like
a focus. It's and I think people focus on it
they got up building something that's terrible, like the like
the University of Phoenix or on these other crappy on
college things that have like I don't think you can
think about it that way. You have to think about what
is the problem I'm trying to solve? Is this problem
big enough? And you know, am I ambitionous? Am I
(31:20):
ambitious enough? I made that decision, you know, nine years
ago to work on this, which we turned nine in
this August, and so yeah, that was when I thought
about that. And now I'm just heads down, trying to
trying to solve this problem.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Black Tech Green Money is a production to Blavity Afro
Tech on the Black Effect Podcast Network and night Hire
Media and it's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well
Lucas with the Ad Digital Production support by Kate McDonald
Arrogant and Jaden McGee. Special thank you to Michael Davis
in Love Beach. Learn more about my guess Other Tech.
This shop is an innovators at afrotech dot Com. Video
version of this episode will drop to Black Tech Green
(31:52):
Money on YouTube, So tap it in enjoying Black Tech Green Money.
Shit to somebody, go get your money.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Peace and love,
We'll look to see a black tech, green money. It's
so good to be with you guys again, bringing you
another remarkable founder here today. Or your Ende is an
education entrepreneur serving as chancellor at Campus Edu. More than
a decade of experience using technology to solve a variety
of challenges in the higher education system. Campus is on
(00:20):
a mission to maximize access to world class education. It's
a new kind of college. Campus offers accredited career focused
degree programs to kickstart your education. These are professors who
also teach at top ranked colleges. They provide live classes.
It's fully online.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Welcome today, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Will absolutely thank you for being here and in advance
like thank you for what you do. We've had so
many conversations in our social discourse about like access to
really high quality education. How do you define world class
education and what does it mean in a community college context?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, to me, world class education is first about helping
students identify what is my purpose? What did God or
as gen Z likes to say, in the universe put
me on this planet to go do? Which we define
specifically as what's at the intersection of what you're good at?
You know, something that's always just come a little bit
easier to you than for other people. What you're passionate
(01:26):
about and what the world is willing to pay you for,
that's your purpose. The first thing we do is we
help students define that, understand that, and a lot of
times they have no idea the full menu of options,
so we expand their the consciousness in that way, and
then we help you get the skills and the knowledge
and the network to make that purpose your life's work.
And so that's what world class education means for us
(01:47):
on campus specifically, you know, you got to inspire the students,
and so we hire all of our faculty as part
time instructions instructors with us. They're also full time instructors
at other top fifty universities in the country Princeton, Stanford,
Howard Morehouse. These are great schools, and it's not just
because they're great and really intelligent faculty, but it's also
(02:08):
because they have a unique ability to inspire students. And
so that's what it's really about. It's about helping students
identify the purpose, inspiring them to believe in themselves, and
then getting them the skills, the network and the knowledge
to make their purpose, their life's work.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So getting in the door at a university or a
college is one thing. Getting access is one thing. Completing
is a completely separate thing. What systemically do you find
is responsible for low completion rates in our community?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, I mean it's there's certainly several factors. I think
It's like, in some level, part of this is like
a gym membership. It's like everybody wants to be the
kind of person who goes to the gym. That's how
they get a membership. But sometimes actually leveraging using that
gym membership consistently putting in the work is a lot
is a lot more challenging. And sometimes you sign up
(03:00):
and you know you're feeling pumped, but actually keeping that
motivation all the way through is a challenge. And so
that's I think a big part of it. And then
life gets in the way. You know, education at the
college level is a multi year investment, and you know
a lot of folks struggle to make medium and long
term strategies as opposed to just optimizing for the short term.
(03:21):
And so a typical thing we see a lot of
two year college students in particular, who are you know,
eighty percent of whom are working whilst in school? Is
is this? You know, students will be working at Chipotle
and it works with the class times, but then you
know Walmart offers them an additional one dollar an hour
and they drop out of school to go take that
new job, and it's like, you know, our job as
(03:42):
educators have to be to remind them no, No, hey,
student will like, what what did you tell me on
first day at orientation? You told me you want to
be X. You want to make this dream come true?
Is leaving Chipotle for Walmart for one more dollar an
hour and dropping out of school going to get you
closer to or fur? They're from your own stated career
and life goal. And then you have to remind the
students of that. And then what you'll see is when
(04:04):
you just have somebody there to do that over and
over and over, the students will actually get it and
they'll they'll make the right choices. So what we do
is we make sure that for every fifty students when
rolls at campus, there's a success coach who is there
to do that. This is not just an academic advisor
who's there to tell you a classes take. No, it's
like this person is paid, like their literal job is
(04:24):
to make sure that all fifty of that their kids graduate,
and so they're constantly you know, kind of like my
Nigerian mom. They'll kick your ass when you're slacking, you know,
and they'll be a shoulder to cry on when you
get knocked down and otherwise support you all the way
to graduation. You know.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
How do you reconsider the role or reimagine the role
of faculty compared to traditional institutions.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, I mean I think, as I said, like to start,
faculty have to inspire, so we don't hire you know, boring,
you know, like just like you know, like uninspirational faculty,
we like to get it. To get hired at CA,
yes he has to be it from a top reputable institution,
but also to be charismatic, engaging, exciting. You used to
be passionate about what you're teaching because students can you know,
(05:09):
they can feed off of that and it actually ends
up inspiring and motivating them and then improving their outcomes.
So to me, that's certainly one way in which our
faculty are better than the average faculty, even at elite
universities across the country. Thing Number two is our faculty
tend to genuinely want to teach. In a lot of universities,
many of the faculty they want to do research, right,
(05:30):
they don't actually want to teach. They have to teach.
In some cases, maybe they know they're on the path
for tenure and so they have to do whatever is
going to help them get you that tenure track job
or get tenured, and so they were fired to teach.
But we actually only hire faculty who want to teach.
They're not doing research, you know, they're not trying to
get tenure. They're just here because they love teaching. And
(05:52):
so I think those are the probably two things that
our faculty do that distinguish them from I think faculty
even other top universities.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
You know, I think about you know when I see
you know, smart, intelligent, passionate people like you, and I
guess my question is, like you could have done a
lot of things with your skill and ambition. Why did
you choose education to work on?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Uh naivete accidentally and Bratton Washington, So I think, uh,
you know, when you're a kid, you don't realize these things,
but now looking back, it's kind of obvious. You know,
my my paternal grandfather was a college dean. My maternal
grandfather was a high school principal. My mother got a
(06:39):
PhD in education, homeschooled my siblings and me and uh
and then and then it became a college dean, and
my older sister, you know, as a professor. My father
started a nursing school. And when we were when I
was twelve and sort of, you know, my brother and
I used to go around and pass up flyers to
all the churches Sunday morning and get able to go
(07:00):
to the nursing school. So, you know, I think sort
of in hindsight, you know, everything was like kind of
forcing me to think about education my entire life. And
my mother in particular used my brother and I as
and my older sister. But my brother and I are
identical twins, So I think it was an interesting sort
of a b test as sort of guinea pig. It's
for different pedagogical learning, modality, is different learning techniques, space
(07:23):
reputation of things like this, and so I guess I've
always sort of been brainwashed at a deep level to
think about how then education work, how can it be better,
how can we make it work for more people? And
so I think that's probably deep in my core, and
I think the accidental bit is just you know, I really,
you know, I didn't plan to be an education entrepreneur
to work in this space. I actually went to university
(07:45):
to study aerospace engineering. I started flying planes. I was
going to be a pilot when I was twelve, So
that was my plan. And you know, and then, you know,
I think, what's what's the quote, everyone's got a plan
into their punch in the face or something like that's
how these things go.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah, you talked about your previous and just now you
talked about your previous track, like where you thought you
were going to be, you know, lending your talents, but
you're now leading a company, no organization, you know, an effort.
How did you learn to lead and particularly lead people
and lead teams? Like how did you learn to not
(08:23):
you know, theoretically, but to actually bring to people together
for a common purpose with their agent.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah, that's a great question. I'm not sure that i've
I don't I don't think I've mastered leadership. Quite frankly,
I'm not passionate about, you know, just leading in an
abstract sense. I'm passionate about solving this problem for our country.
I think, you know, a lot of people think about
education and like an oh education kind of way. I
(08:51):
sort of think about it, if you know what I mean.
I think about it almost as like an existential problem
for the country to solve. You know. I think America
is like we've sold our country rightfully as the land
of opportunity, and it's it's supposed to be a place
where it doesn't matter how you were born or the
conditions of your birth economically, you know, parentally, if you
(09:15):
work hard, you put in the work, you're going to
be able to build a great life here. And I
think over the last thirty forty years, that's just I
think a lot of people feel that's just not true anymore.
And I think a big part of that is the
student loan crisis. I mean, kids are graduating today, you know,
two hundred k in debt. You're starting life in the
(09:36):
red negative two hundred k, and then you can just
from the next decade plus climbing out. You can't buy
a home. You feel like you can't afford to take
any risks like start a business. You know, many people,
like a lot of my age man's are saying they
don't feel like they can have more than one kid,
if any kids at all, because it can afford them.
I think it's an absolute crisis. I think we, you know,
we have to actually solve this. People have to be
able to get a home, you know, by twenty seven
(09:57):
twenty eight. If you're working hard, like you should to
buy a home, right, you shouldn't have any debt to
get a great education, to launch your career. So like
to me, this is what inspires me, and this is
what I get up every single day trying to solve
This is what I spent my twenties and I will
spend all my thirties tackling at least. And so I
don't think I have formal leadership training in any traditional sense.
(10:19):
I think people I found that. I think some of
the smartest, most hard working people are tracktled to passion,
and I think that's why people join campus. You know,
about three hundred people today, and I think they're attracted
with my passion. They know it's genuine, they know that
I'm obsessed with this issue. I think people people are
attracted to people who are really, really freaking passionate, and
(10:40):
they want to work with people who are true believers,
And so I think that's that's what enables me a big,
good leader. I don't think that I'm necessarily qualified to like,
you know, lead you know, a sports team, like I
don't know that I could be, you know, the coach
of the you know, Atlanta Falcons, Like I used to
love football a lot. You know, I still like it,
you know, but it's not like I'm not going to
(11:01):
come out there every single day, day in day out
like coach Saban would or something like that, motivating the guiles,
because that's not my passion. But I can lead people
to go and solve this big problem for our country
and education and access to world class education because people
can literally see that, you know, I care about this
more than most people care about anything. So so I
think that's, yeah, that's how I think about leadership.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, I mean, in starting a company, an organization and
institution in this respect, like you know, particularly because you
weren't setting out on a journey to be a founder
or an entrepreneur, at what point did you realize or
at what happened that made you realize like, oh crap,
Like I'm the CEO, Like I'm the chancellor, like whether
(11:42):
or not we keep going to stop is on me. Like,
what happened when that moment hits you?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, you know, I think that's a good question. Like
in the very like in the first four years of
the company, it was like kind of just me and
the homies. Yeah, I was just recruiting, you know, friends
of friends. You know, people are known through the internet
to work on building software. We started originally just building
the online learning software. I think the moment where I
(12:11):
realized no, no, like on top of actually doing things,
there is like a specific leadership role. I think that
moment was when we bought we acquired this college in Sacramento.
It was called MTI College, and you know, it was
the first time, you know, I'd really sat down with
folks who dedicated thirty years their life to something that
(12:33):
are people who'd worked at MTI College for more than
thirty years, and I had to explain them my vision
and why I thought, you know, campus and rebranding the
institution is campus. And you know, we thinking the way
we were executing on certain strategies, you know, keeping the
same original mission but executing a completely completely different strategy
was the right thing for the institution. And that was
(12:54):
when I was like, Okay, there's a real job here
to motivate, to inspire my staff and to lead them
and to sort of be the kind of person that
they want to follow. Prior to that, it was like, yo, guys,
we just got to get this shit out, like let's build. No, no, no,
professors are using the software. The complaining is buggy. You know,
we can't have it. You know. It was just like
putting out buyers left and right with the passion. I think,
(13:18):
you know, after we acquire the college, it was like,
there's actually like a real responsibility to be a leader,
not just not just a person who's who's pushing everything
with pure passion.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
You know what, I'm curious on what excites you most
about the role AI can play in helping to scale
access to high quality education.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Well, you just said at scale to me is as
really cool. I'll give you an example. So, as I
said earlier, for every fifty students been a role, we
hire a success coach. This is somebody who is there
to motivate the student, who's there to be their point
of contact if the student has any issue, right with
the students feeling depressed, or if the students only with
any life issue. The coach is their first point of
(14:02):
contact to help them navigate whatever they're going through. And
so we hire We have the office in Atlanta. We
have over one hundred people there. Now there are Student
Impact Club and their job is to just work students
through all these issues between all these barriers around or
over these barriers between first day of classes and graduation.
And so when you have a lot of people, you know,
(14:26):
interacting with students, you're responsible as an institution for making
sure those interactions are positive. And now we're not just
a random bank. We call one eight hundred and then
we're going to have a brief survey on how you
to call it No no, Like we want this to be awesome.
So in sound brief survey, it's like we actually need
to be responsible for making sure every single person on
the phone with students, interacturate students, is ready to go.
(14:47):
And so you know, we have a person who just
used to listen to ten percent of all interactions with
students and just grade them and then get feedback or
god fit, something bad happen, escalate that, but generally it's like,
you know, giving feedback and helping these student impact people
be better at their work. Now AI can do it
in a way that's more privacy preserving and more efficient
and cheaper and better. So it's just it's like, Okay,
(15:10):
you can just send a transcript of a call to
an LM if there was a flagged issue, you know,
profanity was used or whatever whatever. You know, you have
a list of things you check for, then a human
actually looks at it. If not, then no human ever
sees it. So you're improving privacy and then you can
scale that up. We're doing it now for all of
our interactions, whereas we could only do it for five
to fifteen percent usually around ten percent of interactions before.
(15:32):
So I think AI can make us way more efficient
at enhancing the quality of our services number one. Number
two is AI should be able to do things that
computers are good at and humans hate doing, and let
humans do things that humans are great at doing and
computers can't do. So. For example, again with our faculty,
I've said it twice already, their job is to inspire.
(15:54):
Do professors from Princeton love inspiring students about what they're
passionate about, what they're area of expertises? Yeah? Do they
like grading homework repetitively. No, they don't. They don't like
grading homework repetitively. So okay, can can a professor set
a grading rubric that an AI executes and automates a
lot of the grading right, yes, for you can do
(16:16):
that a lot of times. And so there's so many processes.
For one example that AI will be able to do.
That will free up our people to spend more time
with students, like actually interfacing with students and not doing
back office processes. And then lastly, you know, I think,
I think. Yeah. The cool thing about campus. One of
the unique things about campus is it's a live online
(16:38):
learning experience. So you know, just like you and I
are meeting face to face, that's how our students meet
the faculty, you know, you know for twelve hours a week.
It's it's a lot of it's in tests. It's awesome.
Now that the annoying thing those that after class ends
right now, there's no yeah. Yeah, if you if you
get stuck on a problem you know you're working on
(16:58):
in your homework or you're setting for examine confused, you know,
maybe you have to wait for the next office hours
to show up or schedule tutoring session. That that could be
two days out with AI. I think we're going to
be able to in the next six to twelve months
have every single student have on demand world class tutoring,
on demand world class study body, you know, on demand
(17:18):
homework help. And I think that's going to be a
game changer for both our students and I think broadly
for higher education in general.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
You know, about ten years ago or so, there was
this big UnCollege movement where people started to challenge the
value of a college education. Yeah, and this was around
the time where I don't remember if we were coming
out or if we were going into like the mooks
like the massive open online college you know season that
we were in. And you know, people have my points,
(17:49):
like people have taken these sorts of challenges on before,
and either there's regulatory or bureaucratic or just pure like
success rate, Like there's there's reasons it hasn't worked in
trying to reimagine college and university experiences Like what do
you what do you have you faced as like the
biggest regulatory or bureaucratic reasons that you know cause challenges
(18:14):
to you know, O'Regan stations.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Like yours cost I'm gonna say, it's refreshing to talk
to a storyteller journalist who's gone that deep on the space.
It's really cool. Yeah, we're not the first, second, or
third to try and tackle, you know, the problem with
access to world class education in the country. I think
a lot of the prior efforts, and I studied all
of them before we got started with the campus, as
(18:36):
any wise person will do, in stalled largely in part
because they didn't have a thoughtful solution to the money problem.
And what that means is specifically outside of basically India
and China, the way that the higher education is largely
paid for is through state subsidies. The government subsizes or
(18:58):
outright pays for the vast majority of undergraduate education. But
the US and Europe that that's just that's the core model.
So if you don't have a way for students to
be able to take your programs through these you know,
state subsidies that they're entitled to by being Americans, Like
in our case, it's the Pelgrant. It's you know, it's
eleven thousand dollars a year for six years. It's a beautiful,
(19:21):
amazing asset that changes millions of lives every year. And
if you don't know how to access that, then your
you're on college or disruptive mook, whatever it is. Is
it not going to work. It's not going to be
successful because that's how most students could college. And so
we were very thoughtful about that from day one, you know,
I you know, our motto is fuc K student debt.
(19:43):
Like we did not want to add one I don't
know if I can curse here. We did not want to.
We did not want to add one dollar to the
pile of student loan debt in this country. And we haven't.
Of our about twenty six hundred students today, not a
single one of them. Right now, our online students has
taken one do a student loan debt. And that's that's
super key for me, you know. So it's all Pelgramt
(20:04):
funded or the students you know, pay out of pocket
if they're affluent and they can afford to do so.
And so basically that's the core. I think that you
know a lot of the people can before failed at
the second piece, that's about a little bit less core.
I think that a lot of folks failed at is
people want college degrees, like they just I think it's
like it's all these like these like Ivy League graduates
(20:27):
in Silicon Valley who don't know, regular people in Atlanta,
in Pittsburgh, you know, in Detroit, you know, in rural America,
like just regular people, and they're like, nobody wants college.
And it's like, pro are you kidding me? Like there's
millions of kids every year who would be the first
in their family to go to college, and they, you know,
they just want the pride of being able to say
I'm a college kid. First of all, I'm not even
(20:48):
a graduate. I'm just a college kid. You know, there's
a millions of kids in middle income high schools and
low income high schools all over the country who senior
year want to wear that hoodie of a college they
got admitted to, even if they're not even going. They
just want to wear. And these these Silicon Valley elites,
you know, they didn't necessarily understand that. You know, in
Silicon Valley, we have this myth of the you know,
(21:08):
the college dropout, of which I am one. I did
three years in aerospace and dropped out. But like so
I understand that, but like they have this myth of
the college drop but it's like Silicon Valley only invests
in college dropouts to drop out of elite schools, like
nobody's investing in the community college dropouts in Silicon Valley,
like you know, and so so. So college actually is
a really valuable thing, both in terms of the confidence
(21:32):
that it bestows upon the people who who complete it,
and and then of course the economic payoff. You know,
if you get a bachelor's degree, you're can to earn
a million dollars more over the coursier life than someone
who's just a high school diploma. If you get an
associate's degree, you're in a half a million more of
the coasher life. So Americans know this. Most people recognize this,
and and so they actually wanted agree. So what they
don't want is to debt. What they don't want is
(21:54):
the stupid, you know, nonsense theoretical education as opposed to practical,
real world skills. What they don't want is a system
that treats them like crap and says, oh, you're one
day late, drugster, Sorry, wait till next fall to start.
Like it's all these like really city, really silly, you know,
sort of idiosyncrasies in our higher education system that no
(22:16):
other service of this level of importance has. You know,
like you're telling me I can't take the class that
I need a graduate because it's full, so you can
make me take an extra semester just waiting around on
camp like the ridiculous stuff that students have to deal with,
and I think that's what folks actually don't want. And
so for us, it was like, how can we solve
the debt problem right so that students don't have to
(22:36):
take on loans? And that was by figuring out a
business model that worked where the tuition is priced below
the pelgrant Number one, number two, how do we make
sure the quality is excellent. You're not learning nonsense that
you know that's not actually going to prepare you to
be successful. You're learning crucial things. For example, if you're
taking our business classes, you're learning how to negotiate. I've
(22:56):
hired a lot of smart people out of the elite
schools in this country. If we're business majors, many of
them don't not negotiate. There's like a contractor here to
fix the window, and the contractor's shoying to negotiate and
they're being all friendly with them. I'm like this is
the contractor. He's going to take you for a ride.
You better take that small after face and africate about
to walk off the room. Like these are things that
the kid in the South side Chicago knows by age eleven.
(23:18):
You know. They know how to posture, they know how
to communicate with the body language and the tone, the
right things they need to communicate to get what they
need to get done done right that kids coming from
the elite business schools in this country may not even know.
And so campus graduates are equipped. If you're getting one
of my business graduates, good luck. If you're sitting acrossing
them on a negotiation table, they know how to read
your face, your body language, They're going to make you sweat, right,
(23:40):
And that's what you know. That's what high quality education
is about. That Sudent's actually looking for, not just theoretical nonsense,
practical skills. And then lastly, we treat students like customers.
They are paying customers. It's not sink or swim. It's
all up to you. No, no, no, How can we
help you be successful in life? How can we create
help you create the life that you want for yourself.
That's our entire approach to students. So if you need
(24:03):
a class to graduate, I don't care if you're the
only kid who needs it. We're hiring a professor to
teach that class. Right. If you need a laptop, great,
we give free laptops to seventy eight percent of our students. Cool,
we got it. If you need Wi Fi at home,
we give free Wi Fi to almost seventy percent of
our students, free WiFi the WiFi. Don't go t MOBILTI
(24:24):
friz them. Let's go, like, what do you need to
be successful? As our customer is our general approach. And
that's so I think when you solve those three things,
you know, when you solve the debt problem, when you
solve the quality problem, and he solved the like you know,
sort of customer centricness problem or central to the problem,
then I think actually everyone wants college. Who does want
to be a college kid? Who want to graduate? Let's
(24:45):
go yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Yeah, And part of the thing that would love for
you to touch on is, yeah, we don't want the debt.
We do want the degree, we do want the education,
but we also want like the university experience. And I wonder,
like you send your name campus like that being on
campus and being you know, fully remote like online, Like,
how do you bridge that gap? Because not only do
(25:08):
people go as you know, well know, not only do
I go to school to get educated, to get prepared
for the real world and et cetera in my work life,
but I also it's my first time out of my parents' house.
I'm starting to figure out who I am in the world.
I'm meeting people from around the world who I never
would have met otherwise, you know, talk to me about that.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Yeah, So campus is ultimately a trampline into the top.
You know, school students want to go to Morehouse UCLA
n y U, and so you can't make you know,
a more House man online. I just can't do it.
You know. My board chair is a former president of
Morehouse University, doctor John Wilson. Like, we talked about this
(25:52):
all the time. It's like the principles that we instill
in these young men, they do have to be there
on campus navigating all types of situations that are going
to help refine them in terms of building out their integrity,
refine them in terms of building out their sense of service.
You know, all these different things that you know, how
do you how do you instill these principles and there
(26:13):
does have to be an in person component. So campus
is just the first two years of college. Our vision
is and our students are coming to us because they
want to start a campus, take no debt in the
first two years, and then transfer. That's the cool thing
about campus versus all these other UnCollege mook type silly
ideas in the past. But they were not accredited colleges,
so you couldn't transfer. Great, you do two years on
(26:34):
course era start over you did? You know? You did
two years?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
You know on college? Okay, you're a freshman. No, no, no campus,
you do two years, you get your sociates degree, and
then we help you transfer into morehouse. Transfer transfer to
students into NYU. Have been admitted to n YU already,
transfer into UCLA and you're still going to get that
residential experience. So again to recap, you know, I think
live online is extremely crucial. It's helpful from an academic standpoint,
(27:00):
and that it enables the students actually do it from anywhere.
So you know, stay tuned. You will see that the
campus experience of being live online, we will actually take
advantage of the fact that it's live online and enhance
students experience for those first two years, you know, through
international through things that are possible in cities where we
have high concentrations of students like New York and Atlanta.
(27:21):
Number two, I think I think you know that transfer
is crucial. Is transfer super crucial? Start a campus and
then go to Morehouse, go to UCLA, go to n YU,
and then lastly, I'll say one more benefit that is
crucial to the learning experience being synchronous online is that
the best professors may not live in a neighborhood. So
(27:43):
what if what if you live in you know, Valdosta, Georgia,
there may not be the best professors in physics or
AI or whatever the specific thing you're passionate about learning is.
And so you shouldn't have to just learn the best
dude in Valdosta who may not be very good. You
should be able to learn from the best person period,
(28:06):
who could be in you know, Toledo or somewhere else
random across the country. So the campus doing the learning
online and enhances I think the average quality of the
instructors because you're not hied to anyone geography. But if
we can still get people together in a social setting
in real life, then I think you'll actually bridge the
gap on those things.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
That finally, you know, I'm interested in your thoughts on
you know, when you build something like this, you're not
necessarily or at least necessarily talking about building wealth for
yourself as a founder. Can you can work in other
sectors and talk about, you know, we're going to make
a bunch of money, we're going to exit at these numbers,
we're going to raise as much to go do that much,
(28:48):
and you know, talk about generational wealth. And my question
to you is, how do you think as a founder
about your opportunity to build wealth? Whow so do goodwile
doing good? And do you see that this could be
a billion dollar opportunity for you or like how how
do you think about it from a wealth generation for
(29:09):
a founder, not for the students, but for you.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah, I mean, look, it's I think the opportunity we're
going after is so absurdly large that if we're successful,
there's no way that you're not going to just build
a great you know, a great a great company. And
you know, if you own a meaningful piece of a
great company, then obviously wealth comes with that. So to me,
I think The mistake founders make when they're working in healthcare,
(29:34):
when they're working in education, you know, these industries where
the customers and the impact you're having on society has
to be the focus, is that they start thinking about
the wealth in like a sort of tangible, specific way.
I don't think you could think about it that way.
I think there's folks on solving this huge problem for society,
and if you do solve it, the wealth will take
(29:55):
care of itself. And so for me, that's the focus. Obviously.
I own, you know, a meaningful chunk of this thing.
You know, we have investors. You know, almost all of
our investors are already billionaires. You know Sam Oltman, Jason Citchron,
the founder of Discord, you know Michael Bloomberg and the
Bloomberg Ventures team. You know Dylanfield, founder of Figma. These
guys are not investing in campus to make more money.
(30:15):
You know, they're already billionaires. What are they gonna do
with more money? Buy another ping pong table? Like? That's
not that's not the goal here. The goal here is
to solve this massive problem for America. And then, of
course we all understand intuitively that if you do, you know,
make calling and texting over the internet super accessible WhatsApp,
or make it possible for people to rent out and
(30:37):
monetize the spare rooms in their house Airbnb, or connect
people you know, with various cars and drivers at a
cheaper than the rate of a taxi at the push
of the button on your phone. Uber that, of course you're
going to end up just accidentally, just as a function
of what the scale of the problem you solved creating
you know, creating and creating very well. And so three,
(30:58):
I don't think about it daily or a month or
quarterly or even probably not even annually. It's not like
a focus. It's and I think people focus on it
they got up building something that's terrible, like the like
the University of Phoenix or on these other crappy on
college things that have like I don't think you can
think about it that way. You have to think about what
is the problem I'm trying to solve? Is this problem
big enough? And you know, am I ambitionous? Am I
(31:20):
ambitious enough? I made that decision, you know, nine years
ago to work on this, which we turned nine in
this August, and so yeah, that was when I thought
about that. And now I'm just heads down, trying to
trying to solve this problem.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Black Tech Green Money is a production to Blavity Afro
Tech on the Black Effect Podcast Network and night Hire
Media and it's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well
Lucas with the Ad Digital Production support by Kate McDonald
Arrogant and Jaden McGee. Special thank you to Michael Davis
in Love Beach. Learn more about my guess Other Tech.
This shop is an innovators at afrotech dot Com. Video
version of this episode will drop to Black Tech Green
(31:52):
Money on YouTube, So tap it in enjoying Black Tech Green Money.
Shit to somebody, go get your money.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Peace and love,
Host
Will Lucas
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