Todd Zipper:
Amen to that, Ruben. I’m singing from the same hymn book. I think there isn’t enough accountability. There’s a reason why we have 1.7 trillion of debt, and I don’t don’t even think students are in paying back mode because of COVID. So who knows what happens when they start that engine back up? And colleges keep enrolling, and not really being held accountable to, are we doing right by these students long term? They’re probably sending messages to folks that graduated. Those that didn’t, they’re not sending any message to, and those messages are, hey, come back and donate.
So what does victory look like?
Really, I wish all to you an informed. It has been very, Ruben. I think you might be starting amazing work, I’m rooting to you personally, and i cannot waiting to see everything perform regarding the coming. So, Ruben, it’s been a delight. Up to next, it’s been An informed Invitees.
Todd Zipper:
Excellent. I’m really excited to talk to you about how you’re shaking up the higher ed industry. But first, tell us a little bit about your background. Previously, you were a math teacher, correct?
Todd Zipper:
Hmm. So it takes a lot of courage and determination to start a business, and in this case, for you, a school, especially for someone who’s still relatively early in your career. So can you tell us about how you got the idea for the Marcy Lab School, and how did you get it off the ground?
Ruben Ogbonna:
I saw time and time again, my students fall into what I consider to be two of the biggest challenges in higher education: inaccessibility, financially, students taking on a mortgage’s worth of student loan debt to pursue a major that would track them towards a career that I did not see as a viable pathway to being able to service that amount of student loan debt. That’s the one. And then I also saw students who would forego the student loan debt trap, and instead decided to go to colleges that were cheaper https://totalcashloan.com/personal-loans-ca/, that didn’t have the sticker price of the historically Black college, or the Ivy league college, or the liberal arts college that they had gotten into.
Ruben Ogbonna:
If you’re coming from a low income background, you’re likely going to have your financial needs met by one of these colleges that likely fall in the top 25 or top 50 of the U.S. News & World rankings. In short, we think those students are taken care of, they’re good, and they’re going to be supported by nonprofits, like Posse and Breakthrough, that are going to help them make the transition into this unfamiliar environment. But in short, the students in that top 25% of the senior class, they’re good, college is working for them.
Ruben Ogbonna:
Yeah. The last quarter of our year-long program is for application, and it looks like one of two pathways, what we call either our practicum program or our capstone program, is what students are tracked into by their last quarter. Practicum is… like it sounds, it’s engineering and practice. It’s an internship or an apprenticeship with one of our partner companies. The goal of that is not to gain exposure to the technology industry, but is actually to demonstrate that you can add value to a team that is shipping products in the real world. The ideal outcome for each of those is a conversion to a full-time job by the end of that period.
Any alternative areas are you currently inadvertently disrupting?
Better, think about for folks who got desktop science in person at the one of our nation’s top CS institutions. For those who grabbed it during the MIT, for folks who took they at the Harvard, you grabbed it during the Carnegie Mellon, how many times, Todd, are you willing to guess a good freshman otherwise an effective sophomore might get feedback of a professor for the the average CS course?
Ruben Ogbonna:
We were really clear in the very beginning that we did not set out to, nor are we in the business of trying to start a coding bootcamp or an incredible coding bootcamp. We’re trying to create a college, a true college alternative for our students. And so operating at the scale of a small college, serving a few thousand students per year in New York City looks like multiple app academic tracks that mirror the same ethos and the same bar for engagement and rigor that our software engineering program has.
Todd Zipper:
So if you give free college to… Again, community colleges, I’m a huge fan of, I’ve talked a lot about on this podcast, but some of the results, some of the outcomes are challenging. Now, there’s a whole reasons why, we don’t want to get into this right now. But the outcomes that you’re talking about at a dramatically lower scale are completely different. And so how do you think about this? I just threw a lot at you, but the idea of offering a free or a low cost education in a way that can scale. Eventually, do you have to charge tuition, or eventually do you have to partner with the government to offer these funds up? How are you thinking about this?
Ruben Ogbonna:
Yeah. 100%. I’m going to start at a place that you might not necessarily traditionally view as career development, but I see it as is that, plus so much more. Our students are just finishing up a unit in their leadership and development course, they’re finishing up a unit on mass incarceration in the criminal justice system. They just finished Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, and this is part of a larger unit on systemic oppression. There’s something that is just so powerful about a bunch of young people who like…
Todd Zipper:
Wow, this is… I’m just digesting all this right now. I feel like you’re just starting from scratch almost. You’re looking at the model, and not intentionally trying to break it, but where else do you see disruption happening?
Todd Zipper:
Hmm. All right. We’re getting close to wrapping up here. So can you look out five to 10 years… What vision do you have for the Marcy Lab School?
Ruben Ogbonna:
It was on that listening tour that I realized that most people don’t realize that not all colleges are good, that not all colleges have great outcomes. If there’s one thing that I want people to walk away with knowing is that in fact, the data would show that like many colleges leave students worse off than when they came. And so, in fact, telling a student to go to college, just because it is a college is dangerous. It’s dangerous advice for young people, and I think it will take another five to 10 years for us to see the full impacts of the damage that we’ve caused to communities by telling every single one of them that college, writ large, is a net positive without holding colleges accountable to excellent outcomes.
