If Learning Is A Commodity, What Makes College Worth It

Send us a text

Trust in college is slipping, yet the desire for opportunity is stronger than ever. We dig into that tension and lay out a clearer path forward: build programs around working learners, publish honest numbers, and align skills with jobs so students see—and feel—real value.

We unpack fresh survey findings showing that Americans still view higher education as a path to mobility, but frustration with cost, debt, and opaque outcomes is eroding confidence. From soaring living expenses to schedules that ignore adult realities, the experience often works against the very people it claims to serve. We talk through why earnings-only measurements are too blunt, how better data can tell a fuller story, and what it takes to communicate value before a student ever sets foot in class.

We also spotlight lessons from adult-serving institutions like UMGC and their intentional design mindset: modular pathways, flexible pacing, data-driven support, and clear connections between competencies and careers. The takeaway is practical and actionable: every offer letter should state total cost, time to completion, and typical outcomes; every program should maintain a living map between learned skills and local job demand; and every institution should treat continuous improvement as a duty to learners, not a branding exercise.

If you care about rebuilding trust in higher education, you’ll find a blueprint here for transparency, employer alignment, and many on-ramps to postsecondary success. Subscribe, share this episode with a colleague who’s ready to rethink student value, and leave a review with one change you want to see on your campus.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:10):
Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz Oakley, and welcome back
to the Rant Podcast, the podcastwhere we pull back the curtain
and break down the people, thepolicies, and the politics of
our higher education system.
In this episode, I take sometime to talk about a couple of

(00:30):
threads from my last twoepisodes.
If you recall, a couple ofepisodes ago, I sat down with
the president of the Universityof Maryland Global Campus, Greg
Fowler, and we talked about theneeds of working learners.
That was followed up with myconversation with Sophie Nguyen
from New America, where wediscussed the latest varying

(00:53):
degree survey that New Americasponsors, which focuses on the
attitudes of Americans withregard to higher education
today.
I want to dive into both ofthose conversations and pull
some threads that I think areimportant for the higher
education marketplace to thinkabout right now, particularly at

(01:15):
this time of political turmoil,erosion, and the confidence of
Americans in higher education,and the enormous challenges that
higher education leaders facetoday, and the pressures that
they're experiencing as a resultof the changes in the economy,
the rise of AI, and the need toreimagine and redesign the way

(01:38):
that we deliver teaching andlearning.
Let me begin with theconversation I had with Sophie
about the Varying Degrees 2025survey.
And I bring this up because I'veseen a number of surveys lately,
not just this year, but over thelast couple of years.
Invariably, these surveyscontinue to tell us, to tell us

(02:00):
as educators, as policymakers,that we are failing the American
public.
That Americans, by and large,continue to lose faith and
confidence in the value of ahigher education.
Now, what we also hear themsaying, and this was true in the
Varying Degree Survey, is thatmost Americans, whether Democrat

(02:23):
or Republican, still see ahigher education as a key lever,
as a ticket to the Americandream, or here in California to
the California dream.
So they're saying multiplethings all at once.
They're saying that, yes, highereducation is still that

(02:45):
opportunity that they want forthemselves and for their
children and for futuregenerations.
But what they're also saying isthat higher education today is
no longer creating the valuethat they once believed it
should.
They're frustrated with thecost, the amount of debt that
learners have to accumulate, thefact that many programs of study

(03:08):
do not align with some sort ofeconomic outcome.
It's not providing the economicmobility that people once
thought it did.
And that it's not servingeverybody equally or equitably.
Now, I understand that a lot ischanging today.
Some of these pressures are dueto the political attacks on

(03:30):
higher education, some are dueto the fact that we had this
mounting debt crisis in highereducation.
And of course, there's been thenews stories, the news stories
about graduate programs thatlead to no economic outcome.
The fact that people are jumpinginto Ubers and Lyfts and having
conversations with their driversonly to find out that they have

(03:52):
a bachelor's degree, though,that they have a master's
degree, but they never foundwork that allowed them to thrive
in the economy.
Some of these are anecdotal, butthey keep showing up in our
surveys.
We here in California at CollegeFutures, we did a survey of
Californians, working-ageCalifornians in partnership with
Gallup.

(04:13):
And much of the same themes camethrough there.
That these working learners arefrustrated with the cost, not
just the cost in terms of money,but the cost in terms of the
sacrifices that they have tomake in order to attend a
college or university that'sbuilt around the schedules of
administrators and faculty, notaround the schedules of the

(04:35):
learner.
They're frustrated with not onlythe upfront cost, but the amount
of money that they have toborrow, the time it takes, and
then the lack of informationthey get about the career choice
that they're going to make andhow their higher education
journey aligns with that careerchoice.
Now, don't get me wrong, thisisn't the responsibility of

(04:57):
every educator.
We can't solve every ill in theeconomy.
Here in California, we can'tsolve the housing crisis.
We can't solve the food andsecurity crisis.
But what we can solve isdesigning programs of study that
meet the challenges of today'slearner.

(05:18):
This is what survey after surveycontinues to tell us.
That we as higher educationleaders have not looked at the
contemporary needs, thechallenges that learners face
today, and begin to design withthose challenges in mind.
And so that's an area that we atCollege Futures are clearly

(05:39):
focused on.
We want to change the narrativearound what value means in
higher education in California.
And who are we creating valuefor?
Are we creating value for thefew and the fortunate that get
to go to the most selectivecolleges and universities in the
state or in the country?
Or are we creating value for themajority of Californians or the

(06:04):
majority of Americans who areworking day to day trying to
make a living and accessinghigher education for the purpose
of improving their lives and thelives of their family, loved
ones, and their community?
That is the trick that I thinkwe need to conquer.
Because if we don't, we're goingto continue to lose the faith of

(06:29):
the public.
We already have lost it.
We need to gain it back.
And the only way to gain it backis to show how we create value
for every learner, regardless ofwhat program of study they're
in.
And I get that federal policy isnow on its way.
It's going to be measuringoutcomes based on the earnings

(06:50):
that a learner has post theirhigher education experience.
And that might be a bluntinstrument.
It's then incumbent upon us tocreate better measures, to work
with our states, to work withour communities, to access data
that helps us to tell a betterpicture of what's happening with
learners, and to show thatpartnerships with employers,

(07:13):
with regions, with communitiescan produce better economic
outcomes, better economicmobility for the learners that
we're serving.
And to open up the tent to morelearners, regardless of what
their backgrounds are,regardless of what their
learning styles are, createopportunities that meet those

(07:33):
learners where they're at.
And so that allows me then topivot to my conversation with
Greg Fowler.
And as I said in that interview,UMGC or WGU or a Southern New
Hampshire or an Arizona StateUniversity hasn't conquered
every problem that learnersface.

(07:53):
But what they do provide for usis a window into intentional
design.
Intentionality with regards toactually going out and talking
to learners, understanding fromthe data that they share with us
what their challenges are, whattheir needs are, using data to
better understand whatinterventions will help that

(08:19):
individual learner improve andsucceed.
Not just what's happening in aclassroom, a classroom of
perhaps 40 or 400 learners, butgetting down to the individual
level and doing that withintentionality.
What sets these universitiesapart from our traditional

(08:41):
colleges and universities in thecountry is that they have been
forced to intentionally designaround the needs of those
learners.
And now they are benefiting fromthat.
And learners are benefiting fromthat experience as well.
They have a better idea of howtheir learning interacts with
and supports their economicgoals.

(09:03):
It provides data to theinstitution, to the faculty, on
what kind of earnings thatlearner is gaining from the
program of study they justparticipated in.
And if there is no gain, itgives information to the
faculty, to the university, tothe college on how to improve

(09:24):
that.
This is not an issue of pointingfingers.
This is an issue of continuousimprovement, creating value.
Again, I go back to this notionof creating value, intentionally
creating value.
And value does exist as welloutside of the economic returns.
Improve health outcomes, improveparticipation in civic life.

(09:48):
All those things create value.
But the lead into this comesfrom the surveys that we
continue to hear from learnersin the field.
That the number one reason theygo to college is to improve
their economic outcome.
The number one reason that theydon't go to college, or the

(10:09):
number one reason that they stopout of college, as was the case
in the Gallup survey here inCalifornia, is because of cost.
So this notion about theeconomics of higher education,
the economics of post-secondaryprograms of study, are really
about how it interacts with thelearner, how the learner sees

(10:31):
the value of what they'regetting.
They are paying money, folks,and they should understand what
they're paying for.
We in higher education, we havebecome the least transparent
industry in America.
Think about it.
When you enroll in a program ofstudy, what information do you
get about the money that you'repaying for access to that

(10:55):
program of study?
Very little.
When you buy a car, there's anMSRP.
When you buy a product, there'sthe product description, what
the cost is, what you shouldexpect from the product.
And I'm not saying that highereducation is a product, but
learning is becoming acommodity.

(11:15):
I can open up my YouTubechannel, I can go to Skillshare,
I can go to any one of a numberof upskilling platforms and
learn a new skill within a fewdays.
Learning is becoming acommodity.
It's available on my phone, onmy computer.
I can go to Perplexity or toGemini or any AI platform that

(11:40):
you use and get information inan instant.
I can ask it to help teach me anew language.
So again, what we in highereducation deliver is value that
lasts a lifetime.
We need to be able to articulatethat better.
We need to be able todemonstrate that better.

(12:02):
And we need to give more andbetter information to the
learner.
And in this case, the learner isthe consumer.
We need to take lessons fromother industries, be more
transparent every time we send aletter of acceptance, making it
clear what they're expected topay, how long it's expected that

(12:22):
they will go through theirprogram of study, and how long
should it take for them to payback their investment.
And then stand behind it aseducators, making sure that we
are communicating with theemployment community, making
sure that we're keeping track ofhow the skills that learners
obtain in their programs ofstudy articulate to the skills

(12:46):
that employers are demanding inthe workforce.
This is a continuous loop.
We will never be perfect at it,but we have to continue to
practice it, continue toimprove.
Because guess what, folks?
The workforce, changes in theeconomy, changes in this world
are happening at faster andfaster speeds.

(13:08):
So I hope that you enjoyed mylast two episodes, my
conversation with Greg Fowlerabout how UMGC designs around
working learners, and then theconversation I had with Sophie
Nguyen about what Americans aresaying about higher education
today, and use that informationto go back to our classrooms, to
go back to our institutions, togo back to our state capitals,

(13:33):
our policy discussions, ourconversations on the street, and
begin to change the narrativearound higher education.
Begin to open up the tent tomany pathways toward a
post-secondary education, notless, creating more value for
more people and in more places.
That's the way that we are goingto reimagine the California

(13:56):
dream here in my great state.
And that's the way that we aregoing to redesign the American
dream for every American,regardless of their background.
Thanks for joining me,everybody, here on The Rant.
If you're enjoying theseepisodes, please hit subscribe.
If you're listening to us onyour favorite audio podcast
platform, download our episodes,uh, follow us, subscribe, and

(14:21):
continue to give us greatcomments and any suggestions
that you have about futureguests.
Thanks for joining us,everybody, and we'll see you all
again soon.