A Focus on Cost, Quality and Customization in Online Education - Geordie Hyland, President and CEO of the American College of Education

Derek Apanovitch: Hi, I'm Derek Apanovitch, and today on Raise the Line, I'm happy to welcome Geordie Hyland, president and CEO of the American College of Education. ACE is an accredited 100% online college that offers affordable programs in education, business, leadership, healthcare, and nursing. It has approximately 10,000 students and 40,000 graduates and is ranked number two on Newsweek's 2023 Top Online Colleges list. 

Of note, 85% of ACE students graduate with no debt. Geordie has more than twenty years of experience with businesses in the K-12 and higher education markets and is a graduate of Harvard University, Harvard Business School, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

Thanks so much for being with us today, Geordie.

Geordie Hyland: Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate being on the show.

Derek: Fantastic. So, we'd like to start with learning more about you and some of your career highlights. You've traveled a really interesting path that includes time as a professional athlete. So, tell us more about that. How did you get started as a professional athlete?

Geordie: Sure, yeah. I appreciate it. So, I actually played college hockey and then played for a year in the minor leagues in the United States after I graduated. After doing that for a year, I went back to school, did a master’s at the LSE, and then spent a couple years in finance helping entrepreneurs raise capital. Then, I went back to business school and joined Google, which was a great experience for a couple of years, and then really got into education. 

I joined a learning management system, and in that capacity, I was in a business development role and did a partnership with a virtual school around the training of adult learners for remedial education. That's where I really found a passion for supporting adult learners with high-quality education experiences. 

Derek: All right. Well, I definitely see the focus on education. Maybe just tell us a little bit about the key learnings from being an athlete, being in the world of hockey and Google, a company that everyone knows and has an opinion of. What were your main takeaways from those experiences and how they relate to your professional life?

Geordie: Sure. I think sports are a great experience for kids and for anyone at any stage in life. The need to learn and develop is something that I have a passion for and I also have a passion for lifelong learning. Through hockey and other sports...I think it probably fostered that interest in acquiring skills and constantly trying to improve those skills. As an adult, it's really important to try hard things and to fail and then to come back and try again, so I think that's where some of the passion for education came from. 

I also come from a family of educators. My mom was a teacher of kids with special needs. My dad was a physician and an administrator for much of his career, but he was always at a teaching hospital. He loved teaching and won a number of big teaching awards.  Both my parents really had an affinity for teaching and so that piqued my interest in education for sure. I also founded a charity early in my career around providing athletic opportunities for kids that were challenging but attainable. So, I think that also was a very formative experience.

Derek: All right. Appreciate that, Geordie. We can move on to ACE and maybe you can give us a brief overview of the school and I guess what makes it special. 

Geordie: Well, I appreciate the introduction. ACE is a higher ed institution. We really focus on education and healthcare. I think a main differentiator is that ACE was founded with the key consideration about return on the students' time and financial investment so we have some of the lowest tuition in the nation, but we also provide a fully online high-quality experience. We have great outcomes. One of them is the 85% graduation rates and our students do as well or better than state averages. 

We have a practitioner driven model, so our instructors are working and bringing the latest and the greatest from the field. And I think the biggest differentiator and one that I'm very proud of

is that ACE, even though it's region accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, does not accept Title IV funding. So that means that our programs and our tuition are not based upon how much debt we can access. We're pricing them with the thought of providing return for the students. You mentioned this as well...85% of our students graduate without debt and pay as they go, term by term, so I think that's a unique model in higher ed. 

With all the discussion around cancellation of debt and around how to help graduates that have huge levels of Title IV debt, I'm hoping that we can raise awareness about ACE's model and more schools will think about keeping costs lower on the front end to help students get through with a high-quality education in an affordable manner. 

Derek: In this combination of value and quality that you're talking about, can you just go a little deeper on that? Because it sounds like this would be the goal of most schools, right? To have this really compelling combination of value for the dollar and a very high-quality education. But clearly not every school can get this equation right. I mean, what are you doing differently at ACE to make those two so compelling?

Geordie: Yeah, it's a great question. I think so. I think it's important to note from the outset that we were founded as a fully online school and a non-traditional school so we didn't from the beginning have huge buildings and investments in facilities and legacy processes.  I think that's helpful. But I think just in terms of providing a quality experience, it's important to have great instruction. It's important to have curriculum that aligns closely with the needs of the career pathways of the students so we have real commitment to having a strong feedback loop from industry and then having very practical learners. 

Our typical learners are adults that are working full time and that are coming to school to get ahead in their careers, and we have a strong connection between the degrees and career advancement and salary advancement. But, you know, we have to keep our content and our learnings practical and accessible, so the fully online delivery modality helps with the accessibility for adult learners that are working and have family commitments.

Derek: So, it sounds like a combination of philosophy and a real focus on execution and efficiency. 

Geordie: For sure. 

Derek: A lot of discipline. Yeah. Now that's helpful. Historically -- I think you may have mentioned this -- there was a focus on educating educators at ACE. And there's been, I guess, more of an emphasis on health care programs recently. Maybe talk a little bit about that expansion of your focus and what are the similarities and differences between educating the educators and educating the health care practitioners? 

Geordie: It was a logical progression for ACE. We were founded by teachers for teachers - so a real focus on educating educators and a really a high-quality approach to the teaching and learning. As we moved into health care and nursing, education is so valued within the healthcare sphere. We're focused on skill-based training. So, very practical, which is very needed and recognized in healthcare. 

Then, you know, the focus on education also extends to education for patients and education for colleagues within the healthcare setting. So, I think it was a very logical progression and it's gone well for us. But the real focus was on creating a quality experience that met the needs of the healthcare and nursing sectors. 

Derek:  A lot of healthcare practitioners have a lot of experience so they may be going back to school much later in life. I know ACE has a focus on prior learning credit. How does that apply typically in the health care space? How can that help healthcare practitioners move along?

Geordie: That's a great question. I think one of the challenges in traditional higher ed is the openness to providing credit for relevant prior learning. If institutions are not open to the concept, it can really increase the time spent in a program where students are learning what they already know, and it can also keep the costs artificially high. 

We have an in-house credit-for-prior-learning team that can help individuals that come to us evaluate and receive credit for their prior learning. Then this team also supports our hospital system partnerships where we can work with the hospital system, evaluate their professional development and as appropriate, assign credit to it and that can help us map our programs and certificates to their career pathways. We can also provide credit for their partner content as well. 

So in-house professional development, but also professional development or certificates or

degrees provided by other vendors as well. So, as I said, it can really just help us be relevant, affordable and map to career pathways in a meaningful way.

Derek: So you're able to create customized educational solutions for some of these healthcare providers? Like, how customized do you make your offerings?

Geordie: So, what we do is we sit down with leadership, and we listen to their challenges and then create customized solutions. We have a range of programming: RN to MSN; BSN to MSN; health informatics; healthcare administration; health and wellness programming; and a range of certificates as well as doctorates. We can customize additional certificates, we can map what we do in partnership with other vendors to really be relevant, as I mentioned, to career pathways. So, it really depends on the needs of the healthcare system. 

What we find is that by listening and being responsive for not only non-degree, but also degree programs, and really trying to map to pathways, we can really differentiate ourselves in terms of being relevant.

Derek: Okay. Thanks. You know, in both teaching and healthcare, particularly nursing, we're hearing a lot about shortages of workers, early retirements, issues with job dissatisfaction. What are you hearing from these groups, and what are you trying to do to address these concerns at schools and hospitals these days?

Geordie: Yeah, well there are articles on this every day and when you speak to leadership, it's one of the key challenges. There are certainly broad shortages, whether it's nurses or other healthcare workers. There are broad impacts, not only in terms of the morale and on the organizational health, but also financial impacts because of the reliance on traveling nurses and other staff. We're seeing a lot of announcements from hospital systems with financial losses and other implications. 

This is one of the challenges that that we think we can really help with, and we try to help with our customized solutions. The thought being that by helping to facilitate career pathways and really trying to partner with hospital systems to articulate the value and importance of a healthcare or nursing career, that that can help attract talented, passionate workers and also can help retain them and provide access to a path to leadership, because there are individual employee shortages, but there's also leadership shortages as well. 

So, I think that that that combination of being able to provide an affordable high-quality solution, that's very flexible -- that can be taken by full time workers -- can really help strengthen the human capital pipeline at institutions and that’s what we're passionate about.

It's interesting...it's a similar dynamic within the K-12 system with teacher shortages. So, it's a challenge that we're trying to be part of a solution for in both education and healthcare. 

Derek: So, in addition to these flexible educational options,are any of these themes making their way into the curricula itself, in terms of teaching resiliency strategies? 

Geordie: Yeah, for sure. 

Derek: And coping with stress and how to recruit better and retain staff better if you're a leader in these settings?

Geordie: For sure. I mean, youyou've mentioned some important themes there. But I think teamwork would be another one and communication skills. There's the hard skills, but also the soft skills that that can help with resilience and persistence, for sure. 

Derek: Now, if you had to look out,three, five, seven, ten years on these issues, what kind of trends are you seeing? Or what are you hearing from some of your partners or the educational healthcare leaders that are taking your programs? Are they getting more optimistic or less optimistic in terms of dealing with staffing shortages and job stress and dissatisfaction? 

Geordie: Sure. There were staffing challenges prior toCOVID, and I think a couple years of COVID exacerbated a lot of the challenges. We're still in a difficult situation within healthcare, especially because there are lots of staffmembers that are moving up their retirements which is further exacerbating the challenge. I do think that innovative, forward thinking healthcare organizations -- hospitals that really value their people and take a strategic approach to humancapital -- will make progress. I think many are at the moment. There's still large challenges, but I do think a couple years out, we're going to see great,great progress. 

Derek: In terms of just drilling down a little bit on the more advanced healthcare education programs that focus on leadership, what are the key themes that you're really trying to emphasize in those programs? For folks who run hospitals or units or even nursing staff, what are some of those key themesthat you keep hearing about?

Geordie: Well, in terms of nursing leadership, some of the topics in a certificate like that are patient-centered care, leadership and management. You're providing the key skills for a new leader to gain the skills to function properly in the role: management of financial resources that are relevant to nursing, relationships through communication, overall knowledge of the health care environment...those are some of the themes that come to mind.

I should mention, you know, our programs are affordable. We have an MBA for under $10,000. We have an MBA/MSN for less than $17,000. Those are both great value for price. An MBA is something that I think is very relevant to nurses and other staff that want to learn some very technical skills from a management and financial perspective that can help them have further influence within the health care ecosystem. 

Derek: Shifting gears a bit on technology, the American College of Education has always been an online school, as you mentioned at the start. 

Geordie: Yeah.

Derek: Certainly online education has evolved quite a bit over the last ten to twenty years. Where do you see things going in terms of online education? We hear a lot about artificial intelligence...o course, I had to mention that in this podcast. 

Geordie: Yeah.

Derek: And mobile devices, you know, as opposed to taking your coursework just on a laptop or desktop. There's all these trends, some of which have been around for a while, some of which are new, some of which are accelerating. What's your view on technology?

Geordie: I know both of us are great believers in the value of online education and some of the value proposition of online education that's been there for years is around being able to have access to the data on the students and progress and their effort levels and being able to use that data to intervene in a strategic way to support students. AI is certainly going to have an impact, but I think at the heart of online education, and education in general, is the strong, powerful and important relationship between the teacher and the student and great instruction really matters. 

So, I think there are ways that AI is going to help take out some of the tasks that are not strategic or meaningful that can help teachers, instructors and faculty connect even more strategically and build relationships more directly with students. That's an important point, but I think generally, online education is going to become a further enriched experience and we see that now with simulations. I think simulations are going to continue to get better. I think virtual reality and other rich experiences are going to become more widespread and as online education continues to be more practical and engaging, there will be even more skills that can be learned effectively online. 

From a technology perspective, I think those are some relevant points. Of course, we've all moved into mobile, and I know that mobile is going to continue to be even more and more relevant, but those are some thoughts that come to mind. 

Derek: Okay. You mentioned the faculty-student relationship. Of course, that's critical and I imagine the students getting to know each other and creating a sense of community is important as well. 

Geordie: For sure. Yeah. Student-to-student interactions are critical as well. 

Derek: I'm sure you serve students across the country and maybe even beyond the country, so talk a little bit about how you build those communities at ACE. Do you get folks together occasionally? How is the curriculum structured to encourage that interaction among the students? 

Geordie: So, among students, there's discussion boards and other ways for students to interact and to share ideas and to think critically with each other. I think that's an important way that we can facilitate the interaction of students. We do have students all over the country and in many countries all over the world. It's fascinating to see students from very different geographic regions be able to share ideas and collaborate and bring different perspectives. That's an important part of the learning experience and one that I think an online delivery mechanism really helps to facilitate. 

At the heart of the teacher-student relationship is meaningful interactions. Teachers caring about the students, and showing that, and then being able to leverage all the information about the student’s progress to be able to help support them in a strategic and relevant way... I think that that is one of the powerful parts about online education that gets missed by some that maybe have just that exposure to emergency remote learning during the COVID crisis. 

Derek: You have a national and international footprint, but increasingly there's a lot of focus on local educational issues or state level educational issues in this country. How is that impacting what you do, if at all, at ACE and what are you hearing from your students? 

Geordie: At ACE, we have a real focus on healthcare and education solutions, so just as we work with healthcare leaders and hospital leaders to provide customized solutions and support that are relevant to a local hospital or group of hospitals, we do the same at the school district level. We're really out there listening and then providing customized support and solutions. I think that's one mechanism where we can help to be relevant and part of the solution in a way that's relevant to local challenges. 

In addition to that, you know, we're always endeavoring to get feedback, not only from students through surveys and action plans around the surveys, but also from employers, school district leaders or hospital leaders to funnel their feedback into the educational experience. 

One of the benefits of online education that I know you're very familiar with is a centralized curriculum model where you're able to leverage instructional designers, a lot of instructor subject matter experts, and keep the curriculum living and evolving and relevant. That's another key mechanism for staying up with the latest trends of providing educational experiences that help prepare leaders for the changing times. 

Derek: All right, Geordie, we often like to ask our guests to provide career advice for emerging healthcare professionals and you could extend that to educators as well outside of the healthcare profession. What's the advice you'd give to young professionals in these fields about how to approach their career and figure out what to do with their professional lives? 

Geordie: Well, I think teaching, nursing, being a healthcare worker...it's a very noble field. It's an important field. I think anyone in those fields should be very proud of what they do, and I guess my advice would be to go into the field. There are great careers. Stay in the field. Align yourself with an employer that's providing a career pathway that you're passionate about, and manage your own path as well by upskilling yourself and really trying to acquire the skills that help you move your career in the direction that you want. So, be really proactive in terms of skill development. 

Derek: Thank you very much, Geordie, for being with us today. 

Geordie: Thank you, Derek. I appreciate your time. 

Derek: I'm Derek Apanovitch. Thanks for checking out today's show. Remember to do your part to raise the line and strengthen the healthcare system. We're all in this together.