903: LIVE From the 2024 ⁠Career Education Convention⁠ - with Allen Garber,⁠ Vice President & General Manager, ⁠Diamond SIS⁠

Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time at The EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. This is the first podcast of the day here at Career Education Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana, where we're going to celebrate—and I mean celebrate—the great work that our colleagues in career education are doing to serve students. This sector of higher education is so needed for many, many students out there and much maligned by detractors in the past. That's not what we're doing here. We're celebrating the sector and the great work our colleagues are doing. Of course, my name is Dr. Joe Sallustio. If you haven't heard my voice, then you haven't been listening to the near 900 episodes that I have recorded on this podcast. We've got a great guest in front of us. I don't want to bring him in now, but I'm going to bring him in in a special way. Ladies and gentlemen, here he is. He's Alan Garber.

He is the Vice President and General Manager at Diamond Student Information System. Alan, what's going on? How are you doing?

Alan Garber: I'm doing well. How are you?

Joe: I am well, thank you. I'm happy to be here and I'm happy to be part of the podcast.

Alan: Well, I'm glad that you wanted to be the first person to the slaughter here at the EdUp Experience as we podcast. It's my first podcast of the day, which means I'm rusty, which means you have to be on point. All right. No pressure.

Joe: Well, let's talk about Diamond SIS, if we can. Diamond Student Information System. Tell us about your company a little bit. How long have you been around? What do you do?

Alan: So that's really easy. Diamond Student Information System's been around for over 25 years. We got started in the career sector by a compliance director at a given school. She went out and looked for a student information system 20-some-odd years ago and couldn't find one that was reasonably priced and actually did the right amount of compliance work, reporting, and student tracking.

Joe: What was missing? Do you know what was missing that prompted these individuals to get started here to serve students? Was it just old tech?

Alan: So you made a reference to career education and how well it's needed, and I think our audiences understand that career education is something that certain parts of the government want to regulate more and more through legislation and just harassment. And so reporting became a huge issue. Student outcomes, grades, drop rates, et cetera. You know, where was the money going? How was it being spent? And that's all stuff that Diamond monitors, records, and can report on. So back in the day, Diana was looking for a system, and she found ones that were tremendously expensive that did what she wanted. And then she found ones that were affordable and didn't meet the mark. So she turned around, found Barry, and together they developed a system and made it affordable for the small, medium, and now of course large and extra-large career schools.

Joe: It's all about numbers and you're right, the career college sector really since 2010, 2011 has been over-regulated to those that pay attention. I think that those that don't pay as close of attention, they go, well, you know, some of these schools, they need this regulation. Well, I'm not so sure, right? So numbers became a huge part, right? And you had to report yourself into compliance because the scrutiny was and is so strong that you have to back up every move you make from a compliance perspective, Title IV, data protection, because somebody comes knocking and comes asking. And that's just the state of education today, isn't it?

Alan: So you're 100% correct that the requirements today on the career education sector are through the roof. If you were to apply the same regulations to the not-for-profit sector, we're talking colleges and universities, four-year programs, the outcome requirements, the reporting necessary, you'd have a major issue with those schools meeting their requirements. And all's fair in love and war.

Career education has a place. There's no question about its ability to take people's careers and turn them successful so that they become independent and become productive members of society way beyond what their initial expectations were.

Joe: Yeah, you know, you make a good point. And as somebody who just, and I mean me, left a four-year near 200-year-old private, non-profit institution. I also have 15 years in for-profit career schools or career college sector and none of the nonprofits, neither of the nonprofits I've worked for, report anywhere near what I experienced in career colleges and for-profits. Nothing near it. In fact, I felt a big part of my job was to teach people how to look at the business because this sector runs more like a business than its non-profit counterparts in many respects. And it's the business of affordability. Somebody needs an affordable education, they come in, they get it, and they get out and they get a job. Period, right? There's an ROI. So how does Diamond help schools? How do you help schools get students through? Is it the reporting? Can you do other things, perhaps?

Alan: Sure. Absolutely. Any good SIS student information system should take the lead, the initial inquiry, and take it all the way through the process of the education, tracking enrollment, tracking their grades, their performance, and reaching out to them to make sure that they are meeting their expectations, that the school's meeting their expectations. And then at post-graduation, we handle all of the placement requirements to turn around and make sure that the school is meeting the requirements and exceeding the requirements of percentages and Johnny got a job doing X.

And that flow from "I don't know what I want to do and I don't want to go to a four-year school and end up with $200,000 worth of debt and have a BBA in general science. What do I do now?" as opposed to going to a career college. Whether it be a technical school, electrician, plumbing, construction, welding, or a medical school, learning how to be an MA or a dental hygienist, etc. Or just any type of career focus. Going out and fulfilling it. Let's take a look at nursing.

Joe: I mean there is a nursing shortage in this country that everybody, if you read any kind of news, you're aware of.

Alan: Tell it like it is. That's right. And you know, we do an excellent job, the career sector, not Diamond, but the career sector does an excellent job of filling those needs. One of the points you mentioned, and I think it's worth doubling down upon is placement statistics. Many people don't know. And if you listen to this podcast, you probably do know because I've shouted this from the mountaintop. But typically, career colleges who are accredited by what everybody now calls national accreditors have to place 70 percent of their students. And I don't know if the stats change, but typically 70 percent of the students in a job. If you apply that to a degree in a non-profit, it would fail like 95% of the time.

Joe: Right. And not only does it now need to be a job, but it needs to be a job within the area or topic of study. So if you educate somebody in, you know, nursing, they can't go out and get a job at an insurance company processing insurance claims. They need to get a job in nursing.

Alan: What you know is what you can prove. That's stats, isn't it? That's statistics. And you ask me what Diamond does and Diamond makes those statistics available for reporting to not only state organizations, federal accreditors, but also to the management of the school. Because the big misnomer in this industry, and I was a school, and I operated a school for almost 20 years, is that they're just out for the money. And I'll tell you what, this is, although there's a good deal of money involved in career education, this is a very difficult way to make it and most schools, not all, but most schools, the people that run the schools, the people who own the schools are dedicated to their students and they're dedicated to the student outcome, the student experience and making sure that they have the skills that they need to get and go out and be successful.

Joe: Amazing! You make a good point. You have to really want to operate a career college. You really do. You have to have such incredible passion to serve students that you're willing to go to bed every night with pressure and stress. Not just from students who are going to put a tremendous amount of pressure on you as a school owner, but your employees, the government, politicians, regulators, you know, then you're watching political changes, local, state. I mean, it is a heck of a lot to consider, to take on. And in the end, you have to want to serve that student so passionately that you're willing to do it. And if you're going to do it, do it right and have and make sure you have the infrastructure to tell the story. Right. That's what it's all about. It's about telling the story.

Alan: That's right. And to give you an example, last night I had dinner with one of our clients and it was very enlightening and really fun obviously because we enjoyed the evening and to listen to his passion and to listen to him talk about the outcomes in his students and this is a relatively large school that has a lot of students and here's an owner, multi-campus, several hundred students enrolled and he's passionate about every one of them.

Joe: What do you think the sector's headed? You get to look at it from multiple perspectives. What's your vision for what needs to happen in higher education, particularly in the career college space?

Alan: Yeah, I don't know that I could speak to it in the non-career space, but in the career space, I think we're seeing, so there are two different shifts, right? There's the shift of the student shift, and I think that shift is, do I really need a four-year degree to go out and do what I want to do? What are the alternatives? And I think we're seeing a shift in years ago, I think you felt, you know, if you didn't go to four-year college, get a four-year degree, you weren't as smart as your fellow students that did that path. But I think you're finding at the student level a shift to the careers, and I think those careers are being recognized as a viable alternative to creating a very nice successful income, career, and future for the student, the graduate, and for their future families. 

The other side of the matrix is driven by the state organization higher ed, the universities of fill in the blank, and their desire to capture every student they can. And there's a lot of pressure that their enrollments are down since COVID. And they are now trying to capture all of those students. And they're using their political might to put their thumb down on career education. And that pressure needs to be counterbalanced by the career schools, the vendors that support the career schools, and organizations like CECU. And we had a brief meeting this morning about how important that is. And I think that we're starting to see the effectiveness of not only CECU, but some of the other state organizations and national organizations.

Joe: And the list is pretty impressive. If I was a politician, I'm not, but if I was...

Alan: You should run for office.

Joe: You know what? My mother-in-law says that to me and I say you gotta be out of your mind. But what one would think now with all the nonprofits seeing immediate closures, what I see and actually it's funny because I just put a post about this on Friday. And I said, we've been here before. We saw many career colleges get shut down for multiple reasons. Some were regulatory, some were unfortunate. Some, you know, the pressure was unbelievable and some just couldn't do it or didn't want to do it. And now a nonprofit closes and everybody goes, what? What's going on? How could this possibly happen? How could you possibly miss the 40 million dollar approved deficit, which I find the term approved deficit like a jumbo shrimp?

Alan: Right. It's the dumbest oxymoron.

Joe: Don't take that to Jacksonville, Florida, because their AAA team is called the Jumbo Shrimp.

Alan: OK, well, I won't do that then.

Joe: But you know, it's like an approved deficit is like, you know, it's just unbelievable. And so now we see these colleges closing. You wonder if politicians are going to say, wow, look what's happening to all these nonprofits. Maybe we ought to give these other career schools who are operating with high regard a little bit of space. You think that'll ever happen?

Alan: So in the ideal world, that would be perfect. But without political activism within the sector, without educating the congressmen, the state representatives, the governors, they don't know. This is lunacy. Well, you know. They don't know. And they need to know. And I think CECU has done a good job of telling their membership, bring a congressman in, show them what you're doing, let them talk to your students, let them talk to your graduates. And I think grassrooting this is the most effective way to really get this out there and really make a difference.

Joe: So if I didn't, I did mention at the beginning, but I'll say it again, Lead Squared is our partner. And a partner and they brought us here to be able to podcast for the first time at CECU. Which I'm so excited and I hear you also have something going on with Lead Squared. Want to talk about that for a minute?

Alan: I'd love to. So Lead Squared is what we call a preferred vendor. It's a partnership that goes back a couple of years now and we're really happy to be here in support of Lead Squared and we actually have a product that handles the front end of our system lead to enrollment that we call Diamond CRM powered by Lead Squared.

So they've been a great partner. They're extremely committed to the sector, as we are as well. And they've been excellent at dealing with the specific needs of a given school, which is really why we partnered with them, because that's kind of what Diamond's about. We're not an off-the-shelf, here it is, go use it, and it'll be fine. We really sit down and work with the clients, develop a program that meets all of their needs, satisfies their pain points, and provides the documentation that they need. In wrapping this back around to Lead Squared, they have that same philosophy on the front end.

Their reporting tools are by far one of the best in the industries. So they can develop a report. They can tell you exactly what time is the best time for reaching out to students and what kind of outcomes they had at 11 o'clock and what kind of outcomes they had at two in the afternoon. And it's ridiculous.

Joe: It is very good. I know it well. The details and the amount of microscopic development that they can put into your specific system.

Alan: So if you haven't, if you're, I'm reaching out now, here's the sales pitch. Do it. Alright. If you're reaching out and you're not happy with the system that you have, it's not meeting your requirements, come over to the Lead Squared booth, come over to the Diamond booth, we're 203, I think they're...

Joe: Well, I don't know. I know I'm 101, I think. I'm not even sure what booth I'm at.

Alan: You're 101. Surprise, surprise. I'm 203 and there are a couple of doors down from me in the middle. And I'll tell you what, together we are better. And that is how we sum up our relationship with Lead Squared, CECU, and your school.

Joe: Anything else you want to say about Diamond SIS to leave us with? Anything that we haven't said? Any question I didn't ask? Anything at all?

Alan: So the only thing I can think of is you don't need to be spending a fortune to get what you need to operate your school. There's a lot of programs out there that are tremendously expensive. They're wonderful programs. No, no, no shame on them.

Joe: Yeah, no shame on them because they deliver a wonderful product but they're astronomically expensive particularly for that middle to small school.

Alan: So if we can help you come by, we'll talk about it. No pressure, we'll listen to you and we'll tell you what our solutions are.

Joe: Well there you have it everybody. This has been our first podcast but not the last podcast here at CECU, Career Education Colleges and Universities Career Education Convention. I think I got that right. Of course, we're here in huge thanks and solely due to our great partner at Lead Squared. And you got to hear from this gentleman. He is Alan Garber, he is the Vice President and General Manager at Diamond SIS. Alan, did you have a good time?

Alan: I did, thank you so much and thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

Joe: Ladies and gentlemen, you've just ed-uped.