Andy Vaughn, CEO of Alliant International University

Mr. Vaughn serves as the President and Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”) of Alliant International University since 2015. Prior to joining Alliant in 2015, Mr. Vaughn served as the President and CEO of Trident University, California, where he also served as Chief Operating Officer (“COO”).

He started his career in higher education at National University in San Diego and has served in various roles at institutions including Regional Dean, President and CEO, COO, Vice President of Marketing and Admissions, and Associate Director of Student Services, among others. He currently serves on two separate boards including as a member of the Board of Directors for St. Luke and Central Valley Education Consortium.

Mr. Vaughn completed his undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a graduate degree from National University in San Diego, and is currently completing a doctoral degree at the University of Southern California.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Higher education is an incredibly competitive marketplace, so how do you succeed without the
name brand recognition of a major university. Alliant International University is one of the
major success stories with continued growth,including right here in Phoenix. Joining me
today is the CEO of Alliant,Andy Vaughn. Andy, good to see
it, Thanks for joining me.How you doing today, Well, it's

(00:21):
great to be here. I loveradio. I'm so happy to be here.
It's been a long time since I'veseen a mic like this and it
excites me. We can have aradio voice off, I know. Just
take turn high everyone, Good morning, Good morning. Let's talk about your
field and your background. First ofall, how you got to be the
CEO of Alliant, How the paththat you took led you to higher education

(00:44):
and where you sort of first startedto plant those seeds to ultimately run an
entire university. It's funny, butI never wanted to be in higher education,
never even crossed my mind up untilabout thirty years ago. That ages
me a bit, but let meexplain. Actually, my first career was
radio in Nebraska, Pennsylvania, andthen finally California, and I thought I

(01:07):
would do that and I saw whenthe Internet came out. This is in
the early nineties. You could kindof see radio is going to change a
bit. So I looked at othercareers. I went to graduate school in
San Diego to become a K twelveteacher, and I started going to classes
continue to work in radio, andabout six months into my coursework, the
director of admissions said, you everthought about being in Higher ED. You'd

(01:30):
be great in marketing and Higher EDor admissions recruitment be a great job for
you. And I said, no, I'm not really interested. Then she
said, if you work at ouruniversity, your tuition will be free,
and I said, I am nowinterested. I'm in. This is a
true story. I had no desireto switch jobs, and once she said
free tuition, I said, signme up. I interviewed for the job,
got it, left radio, gottena hired, and I thought,

(01:53):
I'm going to do this for twoyears to finish the graduate degree, and
then I'll segue into K twelve tobe a teacher, a principal superintendent.
On the K twelve side, themost important job in this world to me
is a K twelve teacher. I'mvery passionate about education, especially K twelve
and increasing the quality, increasing access, all of that. So about a

(02:16):
year into the job, I fellin love with Higher ED and I thought,
you know what, instead of impactingK twelve on the school side,
all impacted on supplying teachers to theschools because my specially was recruiting teachers for
a licensire program in California. SoI did that and that was thirty years
ago, and here we are.Were there parts of that experience when you

(02:38):
were going through your process that helpedinform how you wanted to lead Higher Ed?
Were there parts of it that youknew could be done better? Were
there are parts of it that youknew you could, as you mentioned,
make more accessible? And kind ofhow did that in person experience help shape
your leadership style? I think it'sjust being true to yourself. A lot
of times we're asked in our roles, what is your leader style? And

(03:00):
the first thing I say is authentic. And what I mean by that is
when you can impact someone just bybeing real and not off a phony script
or some sales book you read oroh I saw this latest YouTube video about
how to sell or recruit. Youknow, put all at this. That's
all fine if it gives you sometips, but just being true to yourself

(03:22):
and being very frank with someone.And this really hit me. This is
when I fell in love with highreed. I remember someone finished their teaching
credential program and it wasn't until yearslater I realized the impact I had switched
universities about five years later. Andthis is before. This is before Google
today and you can't really find Thisis prior to being able to find people

(03:42):
so easily today. She found me. I get this call from receptionist and
she goes, there's there's Linn Mo'son the phone for you, And I
said, I know that name andI hadn't seen her in five six years.
She goes, Andy, I don'tmean to sound like a stalker,
but she goes, I tracked youdown for a reason. I just graduated.
You met with me five years agoand we just had a conversation.

(04:05):
You spelled out for me how Iget my bachelor's degree, and then how
I get a teaching credential my master'sdegree. I just got my first contract
as a K twelve teacher because ofyou just walking me through it and being
patient with me. And that wasjust this moment. Wow, this is
why I love Higher ED. Itwas able to connect the dots for people.
But the authenticity I think in higherED that you bring and to get

(04:28):
people from point A to point Zand simplify all the letters between. Because
let's face there's a lot of complicationsin higher education K twelve education and what
it needs more are people to clarifyand simplify and get rid of all the
jumbled mess and just make it veryeasy for people to chunk it out a
little bit to this is how youget from A to Z. Let me
help you do that. I knowsomeone who's been a prospective student in that

(04:51):
realm. There's so many choices now, right, there's so many options.
One of the things that stood outto me about a Lion is seventy two
years the institution has been around inyour time with the Liant, How has
the quote unquote game changed from aHigher ED perspective, and how has it
changed in terms of making sure peopleknow who you are, where you are,

(05:13):
and what's available. The major changein higher education in the last ten
to fifteen twenty years has been itused to be people would come to a
school and say, you know,I want to think I do a degree
or certificate program in this discipline causeit's a nice to have. Those days
are done. Nobody goes to highD these days for a nice to have.
Instead, you get training on YouTube, or you go to a mook
an online a certificate program that's alot less expensive. There's other ways to

(05:39):
build your skills today, or tobuild your insight, or you get a
book, a really good book.In higher ed today, what we're seeing
is a trend towards must have programs. We made a conscious choice about nine
years ago to alliant to switch andflip. We got rid of most of
our undergraduate programs, actually all ofthem at the time, and we switched
to programs that are must have licensureprograms state licenses issued, where we became

(06:04):
a professional practice university. Laser focusedon graduate level programs, most of which
lead the licensure. Because you can'tgo get a teaching certificate on YouTube,
right, you can't read a bookbecome a clinical psychologist. It helps propel
you to want to do that,but it doesn't give you the license.
So what we did instead is focusedon programs that are must haves, and

(06:27):
we flip the university model to bemore of a niche player. So we
no longer have sports teams we usedto, We no longer have undergraduate programs
in dorms we used to, andwe've become really primarily a graduate level university.
The one exception is our new nursingprogram in Phoenix that's undergraduate level,
but that's it. Everything else isgraduate level, and there as you mentioned,
there's some of that is in personinstruction, some of it is available

(06:50):
online instruction. How do you findthe balance as the leader of Alliant where
you're offering in person versus where you'reoffering the convenience of online education. Even
most of our online programs have residencyrequirements or they have internships, externships where
you have to go to a hospital, a school, a prison system,
a clinic to get your experience inthe disciplines we teach. We specialize mainly

(07:15):
in three areas. One is mentalhealth, certificate programs, licensure programs,
and graduate degree programs, mostly atthe doctoral level. Two is physical health.
We just launched our new School ofNursing and Health Sciences. It's now
in Phoenix, soon will be inCalifornia. And number three is K twelve
certification in California We have a sistercompany that does certification in Texas and other

(07:36):
states, but we, as ona university, really concentrate K twelve certification
in California, and so for us, the online version of courses is what
the market demanded, and things likelectures, assignments, paper turning in papers,
all that you can do online.But the professional practice part is either

(07:57):
in the school itself or a clinicor a hot hospital system, or with
our training and faculty and staff developmentwhere they're meeting with you on a campus
maybe for a day a week,once a month, whatever that might be
for a program, and you stillhave that interaction with human being. So
it really is the best of bothworlds. Let's talk a little bit about
the nursing school that you said inPhoenix. Obviously, the school of nursing

(08:20):
and the field of nursing is vitalto how we do everything in our society.
What made you want to create thenursing school. What needs were you
meeting that were widely needed in thecommunity, and what did you want to
do with the nursing school. Whatare you doing that helps differentiate it from
other nursing programs. Well, oneof the great stoppages of opening more nursing

(08:43):
schools is the funding and capital ittics to do. So these are not
inexpensive programs to start, and you'rerunning a loss for the first four or
five years when you do that aswell, so you're hiring faculty and staff,
you're renting a ten year lease orbuying a building. The life equipment
itself is a couple of million dollarsfor one campus, if not more,
and so a lot of schools it'sprohibitive to them because they don't have the

(09:07):
capital to do that. You hearthe stories about the financial pressures in higher
education today. You know it's beenestimated up to half of universities and colleges
or under some sort of financial pressure. We're fortunate that we're not, and
so for us, I think it'spart of our public benefit corporation status where
we think about how can we bestget back to the communities. Put some
funding in starting a campus, andnursing is ten to fifteen million dollars up

(09:31):
front. You don't see any returnon that investment for years. It's not
for every school to do and forus, it was really important to be
able to match it to our existingmission We've been the national leader in mental
health programs for over fifty five years, and so this just made sense for
us. It fit our mission,it fit our criteria of a licensure program,

(09:52):
high demand area that leads to specificgame from employment and a high demand
career. That just made sense forus to do, and so we're excited
about that. We just started ourfirst cohort in early twenty twenty four,
and we'll keep recruiting in Phoenix fornursing throughout the next many years. It's
such an interesting lane occupy when yousay must have, because I'm just sitting

(10:15):
here hearing you to describe the expertisethat ALIGN has. The mental health field
is widely underserved across all segments ofour society, and then teachers and nurses.
Again, if we don't have essentiallya steady supply of new teachers and
new nurses, everybody suffers. Sofrom that vantage point, what is sort
of the driving force behind that philosophyis that the community wide impact is that

(10:39):
the ability, as you mentioned,the get the next generation of people impacting
the community at large. How bigof a focus was that for you personally,
based on your background, really big? I think for US, it's
important to listen to our communities,and communities can mean a lot of things.
It can mean a city, ageographic area, a regional state.
But for US, community also meansprofessional sectors, so we may not be

(11:03):
the biggest brand name in our markets. Here's a funny thing. Sometimes people
say I've never heard of a lyinguniversity and I live in the city.
You have a campus, And Ialways say, that's okay, because we
don't have sports teams, and wedon't have dorms, we don't have huge
undergraduate we don't have these three hundredacre campuses. We've got a seventy two
acre campus in San Diego. Butthe other centers are really pretty much in

(11:24):
a corporate center, pretty small campus. So that's okay. I don't take
offense to that, because what's importantis that the schools know who we are.
The hospitals know who we are.The clinics, the prison systems,
the mental health centers, they allknow us. We are the largest provider
of licensed clinical psychologists in the entireUnited States. About twelve to thirteen percent

(11:48):
of all licensed psychologists in the entirecountry come from Alliant, and in California,
about forty percent of all licensed psychologistsare from Alliance California's School Professional Psychology.
That's a number that's hard to competewith. But if you ask any
psychologist, anyone in mental health,especially in the West Coast, they're absolutely
going to know who we are.I was in the elevator in San Diego

(12:11):
in a building downtown a few monthsago and said good morning, and she
saw I was dressed for work,and she goes, oh, where do
you work a lunch? I knowone of your student teachers. That's what's
important to us. We don't haveto be a brand name rolling off the
tongue. That's fine because most peopleknow schools because they're associated with a state,
or they know they's sports team.There's actually five thousand universities in this

(12:33):
country, and I guarantee there's abouttwenty five hundred you've never heard of that
are doing really good things. Andthat's okay. The important thing for us
is to be really laser focused onthe communities we serve geographically, professionally or
other, and they know who weare and what we do our already and
should also know you guys did trysports? Oh did then you had sports?

(12:56):
Yes? As sing psychologists and teachersand nurses. But you yeah,
we tried it. I mean,so Alliant University is a play on words.
It's an alliance of schools. We'vehad many mergers in about eighty years.
One of our schools, WASSU USIU, became Alliant United States International University.
Back about twenty years ago is whenwe changed our name and USIU.

(13:20):
Alliant, as known as Alliant todayhad Division I basketball among other sports.
We still have the basketball arena inSan Diego at our campus and we ran
it out to high schools now todo tournaments there all the time. So
if you look it up, westill hold the NC DOUBLEA record for worst
basketball defeat and NC DOUBLEA history.About a year later, we disbanded sports

(13:41):
Now. I wasn't here at thetime, so I'm not sure if that's
connected, but I'm pretty confident itis. But Oklahoma beat USIU, now
known as Alliant, by over onehundred points. Wow. Sporting News ran
a story about this about a yearago, and it says that the night
the lights lit up in Norman andwe're on the defeat side, by the
way, so we kind of walkedaway from sports at that moment. In

(14:01):
time well and everything else, You'vethrived and flourished. And I was on
your website and I noticed that there'sa there's an acronym that Alliant used a
lot called Impact. What does thatmean? What does that mean to these
prospective students or the alumni? Whatdoes it mean to your overall business approach?
Impact is our value system my researchbackground and higher ed is the impact

(14:24):
that employee engagement has on driving organizationalsuccess. So many times in this world,
whether it's private equity corporations, evenschools, even nonprofits, not enough
attention is paid to what is theculture like in the environment people for customers
in our situation, students or peoplethat work there. When our team first

(14:45):
got to Alliance, we did anemploye Engagement survey Gallup Q twelve is my
favorite, although there's others out there. You can use about a dozen of
them to assess and what we sawwas, Wow, we have got a
lot of work to do on trustand transparency and the culture, and we
quickly. That's my interest in academicsis the impacting employee engagement has. If
your workforce is not engaged, you'renot going anywhere. You're just not And

(15:09):
I can't believe how many times businessesor schools are purchased or transitioned or merged
into other operations where you ignore thatat your own peril because if your cultures
don't match and they're not a goodculture, and you don't have engaged employees
and customers in our case, students, you're not going to make it very
far. And so impact for usis we ask twenty faculty and staff.

(15:33):
And by the way, when youinstill value system at an organization, it's
important you don't do it top down. It'll fail every time. What we
did is we gave a small budgetto twenty faculty and staff, went to
our faculty, sent staff councilor thatwe need twenty of you to over the
next six months work with a consultant. The leadership team will not be involved
whatsoever. We want you to formwhat's called a value system. The only

(15:58):
thing we ask is that you doit in six months, that you stay
away from asking us questions. It'sup to you to tell us. These
could be aspirational values ones we don'thave yet, or they could be foundational
values ones we already have you wantto see more of. And then just
giving as an acronyms, people canremember what it is. They came back
with the impact values. So twentyfaculty in staff actually presented to the leadership

(16:19):
team these are the values for us, and we said, great, this
is perfect. What happens is whenyou instill values and you codify them and
people know what they are, itinduces behaviors. And then after a while,
I've seen this three times in mycareer, but after a while you
see people start self policing. So, in other words, it's not a
punitive thing. The leadership team doesn'tgo, hey, you violated the eye

(16:41):
value. That's not what we hear. We hear colleagues saying to peer to
peer, you know when you saidthis the other day or you sent that
email, it kind of I feltyou violated the C value of communication.
Here's how it made me. Oh, I'm so. And then we also
give awards for those that demonstrate behaviorsat prop of each value. So for
us, the values are everything.I had a board member ask us about

(17:03):
our turnaround plan the last ten years, which went a long way, and
she goes, if you were topick just one thing, one thing that
drove the turnaround in success for aliant, What is it, she goes.
I know there's a million things outthere that help, but as impact
values. Once we had a codifiedsystem of values that were bottom up,
in the middle, down, youname it, every direction. It changed

(17:26):
the behavior of everybody, including thestudents, like you've never seen before.
And that's the one thing we stickto. When you were describing that,
it reminded me. I'm a sportsguy. In my background of sports,
there's heat culture, the Miami Heat. You're a Nebraska football fan, tom
Osborne, I guarantee you everyone whoplayed for Tom Osborne could tell you exactly
what wearing Nebraska cross their chest represented. Yes, And it is kind of

(17:48):
amazing that more organizations and institutions don'tadopt or adapt that from the sports world.
But it sounds like that's exactly whata Lion has done in its own
way independent of that. Here's atest. If you go to an organization,
any employee, and you say whatare your values? They'll say,
ooh, I think I've seen thosebefore. Some you already know, no
wall, there's the whole dusty plaqueon the front door. If they can't

(18:11):
say, oh, it's this,or it's this, this and this it's
not happening. And I guarantee youthere's a room for improvement at most places.
And I'm not saying we're perfect,by the way, my gosh,
we have work to do too,but I'm saying that you really have to
try and manage it. It hasto be. It has to be an
element of what you do every day, and your leadership team has to practice
these values. Again, do Istumble once in a while? You bet,

(18:34):
I do. But the important thingis you apologize for it, you
correct it, make sure it doesn'thappen again, you move on. But
the value system of any organization,I think is the most important part of
success. Let's talk two more questionswith our guest Andy Vaughan here on CEOs.
You should know from Alliant International University, what is the future hold?
What are your goals? What areyour ambitions? What is is you steer

(18:56):
into the future five ten years fromnow? What do you foresee for Alliance?
We see continued growth in mental healthlicensure programs. There's five mental health
areas in the United States. Thereis clinical psychology that's doctoral level work,
sometimes research, but we really concentratemore on the clinician side. There is
marriage family therapy, also know ascouple's family therapy. There is clinical counseling

(19:21):
that's more one on one therapy andcounseling. There's Master of Social Work.
Social work is the largest discipline ofmental health in the United States. We
just launched that program two years ago. And then there's psychiatry. We don't
do psychiatry because that's a medical doctordegree. We don't do that one,
but they do the other four.We're the largest in the country at clinical
psychology. We're the largest in Californiain marriage family therapy, couple's family therapy.

(19:45):
We just started the social work program. In clinical counseling is growing a
lot. We just got our speciallyaccreditation a couple of years ago on that
one. We see continued demand andsupply for those programs, and we dominate
in mental health. Nobody does itbetter than our California School profess psychology.
We also have those programs available onlinewhere you have to come into San Diego.
What a horrible place to have togo. By the way, it's

(20:07):
awful. You've got to come toSan Diego a few times for residencies,
but otherwise you can do the programingline. We help you find sites to
practice for the academic side of itat least, and so that's big for
us. The next one note forus is relatively new, and that's the
School of Nursing and Health Sciences,just launched in Phoenix in early twenty four.
We plan on expanding in Phoenix eventuallyto other health sciences programs, and

(20:30):
in San Diego. We're getting approvalat this point to run our first occupational
therapy program at our San Diego campus, and we're looking at expanding in health
sciences in California and likely other westernor Southwestern states as well in the next
five years. And then on theK twelve side, we'll continue and expand
our access and reach in K twelvecertification in the state of California. Let's

(20:55):
take a quick ten thousand foot viewof the higher education landscape. Obviously,
there's always conversation about cost benefit analysisfor people in their careers. You mentioned
to have the must have degrees forpeople that need it, and you provide
the best possible way to do thatpeople. Student debt's a big conversation in
the United States of America these days. What is your opinion and perspective on

(21:17):
the economic force of higher education inour communities at large. It's a big
force. It is still proven withdata that having access and finishing a higher
education degree takes you further. Butit's all about value and quality of the
program. Look, there's a lotof angst about student debt, as there
should be. It's awful, itis really a problem. But student debt

(21:40):
is not a problem. If theprogram you attend is high quality, that
your professional life improves because of it, and therefore your family life does too,
financially hopefully. And I think thatyou have to look at the value
propositions school offers. If I dothis program, what's it look like On
the other side, talk to enoughpeople, Look at your alumni and see
what is the success right, whatpercent graduate, what percent get licensed?

(22:03):
Look at all those factors, andyou know, for us, we do
a really good job in all thoseareas. And I think that you're going
to see a lot more schools goout of business in the next five to
ten years. There's a lot ofnew regulations coming out of the Department Education
that will impact higher ed, especiallyin the next two or three years.
And on top of that, themarket demands are changing and some schools aren't
keeping up. They're really still grabbingon to what high ED used to be

(22:26):
for two hundred, three hundred years. And that's a shame because you do
have to innovate and change and adapt. You've got to go where the market
is going, and not every schoolis doing that. You're going to see
if there's been a lot of schoolclosures in the last five years, there'll
be many more coming up in thenext few and you know, the schools
that have not adapted and changed,like Alliant, will have issues with that.
There's thousands doing it the right way, there really is, but there's

(22:48):
hundreds that are not, and you'regoing to see that impact. But still
today, High ED has a bigimpact on an economy and on the growth
and the quality of life in everycommunity. We serve impressive conversation. Anything
else that you want to get tothat we didn't have a chance to cover
now, thanks for having us on. We really appreciate spreading a message.
I think not everyone knows who weare. We're probably in your backyard,

(23:11):
especially if you're in the Arizona atCalifornia. You've been you're seventy two years
right, Yeah, in long time, long time We've been on our campus
of San Diego since the nineteen fifties, and we've been around through different mergers.
Our first school is actually a littleolder than that. Our oldest school
is one hundred and thirteen years old. Wow, So we've been around a
long time. And here's the thingthat makes us unique as well. Not

(23:33):
only are we a professional practice universitythat laser focused on licensure programs at the
gradual level, but we also breakglass ceilings like nobody's business. You see,
in the last five years, corporationsand organizations have flipped to the DEI
model, at least on the inclusiveside, because some of them had to

(23:56):
for survival. And that's a shamebecause there's some of us out there that
have been doing this for a longtime, for decades, because it was
the right thing to do, notbecause we have to do it, because
we wanted to do it. Itwas the right thing to do. In
my lifetime, it was still considereda psychological disorder to be gay in the
nineteen seventies. It was. Wewere one of the first schools to try
to fight against that. When youlook at inclusivity and what it means to

(24:22):
various populations. We had a littlelaw school in San Francisco back at the
turn of the century, and wefound a newspaper article from San Francisco.
I think it was in the teens, nineteen teens. We graduated the first
two females in California. They havea lot degree. Now, imagine that
would be front page news today.That's just not a thing, right,
But it was front page news thenthat How dare a university graduate two women

(24:47):
from law school? That's unheard of. That's big news. We've been breaking
glass ceilings for over one hundred years, and I think that's really important.
We see people's differences as a strength. For me as a gay man,
when I first came out of thecloset, it was dangerous for your health
physically and mentally, and you couldlose your job over it. Imagine my

(25:08):
surprise flash forward now thirty years later. I wish my mom was alive to
see this, because she was concernedabout that too, By the way,
she was very open minded and accepting, was one of the few that had
that. By the way, buttoday I find a place that during the
interview, I think, how wonderfulis this that I found a place that
celebrates that that I can be meright, and so I think for us

(25:32):
that's a really important part of whowe are is we celebrate our differences.
We don't label them and put themin boxes. I think fluidity is great
in all aspects of life. Lifeis more gray than we want it to
be. As human beings. We'dlike to label and box and you're this
or you're that. You know,nah, it's not the way it works.
Nature in general is a little bitmore grey than we're comfortable with being,

(25:53):
and we celebrate that and that's abig piece of who we are.
Well, thank you for the conversation, thank you for the mission and the
commitment to authenticity that Alliant has,and thank you for telling your story here
with us on CEOs. You shouldknow, it's great to be here.
Thanks for having us. That's itfor this edition of CEOs. You should

(26:14):
know, Phoenix. Until next time, I'm joe Yaylor. Thanks for listening.