850: The El Paso Connection - w/ Jane Swift, Former Governor, Massachusetts & President, Education at Work, & Louie Rodriguez, Vice Provost, Professional Dev, Engagement, & Strategic Initiatives, UTEP

Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time to add up on the Edup Experience podcast where we make education your business. We've got a packed house today - guest co-host, two guests, and only one person can talk at a time, although we're going to see how far we can stretch that and probably interrupt each other along the way. But this is what makes the experience so exciting as we can bring together so many awesome combinations of people. 

I'm going to bring back a former guest, now first-time guest co-host. He's going to make mistakes. Let's just bring that forward, ladies and gentlemen. He's going to make mistakes, but we're going to love him because he's taking his first foray as guest cohost. But we all make mistakes here. I do too. I'm probably going to do it when I introduce them, but I'm going to try to get it right here. Ladies and gentlemen, he's Benny Boas. He's the CEO of Upright Education. Benny, welcome back to Edup.

Benny Boas: Mike, how are you? Thanks for having me back. I'm excited to make some mistakes as your co-host and excited to be on the podcast for the second time. This time I get to feel the pain and the excitement of having a conversation on the other side of the mic. Thank you.

Joe Sallustio: Surprise. Yes. And so you like the setup because I say you're going to make a ton of mistakes. Now, when you do, it's all expected. You're going to go see. I told you so. And nobody is going to ever wonder. Right. That's the way it works. You being so sympathetic. That's how we set things up here.

Speaking of setting things up, we obviously like to talk about students - their educational journey, the work that they have to do along the way, if you will. I've brought two guests to the microphone to talk about the work they're doing in partnership to give students a better experience. And I mean that truly, the word experience. And they're going to come and tell us about it. Let's get them in one at a time. 

Ladies and gentlemen, first, he's Luis Rodriguez. He is Vice Provost for Professional Development at the University of Texas El Paso, AKA UTEP. What's going on, Luis? How are you?

Luis Rodriguez: Hey, just fine, Joe. Thanks for having me on the show. Really excited to get into this conversation here.

Joe Sallustio: All right, well, we're going to get into it. Let's get our second guest to the microphone. There's just not enough applause to go around. Ladies and gentlemen, she is Jane Swift, the former governor of Massachusetts and the President of Education at Work. Jane, how are you?

Jane Swift: I am doing really well. Thank you for having me on. And I wish I had had that canned applause back when I was in politics. It would have just been going off left and right.

Joe Sallustio: Let's be honest, right? It would have been impressive all the time. No. And you're doing great work now, Jane and Luis. But there's a great partnership that I know you guys want to talk about today. But I want to give everybody an opportunity just to kind of level set for us. Luis, we'll start with you. University of Texas, El Paso. Other than the obvious, Texas, what do you do? How do you do it? Give us a little two-minute elevator pitch on the University of Texas, El Paso.

Luis Rodriguez: Sure, absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity. So yeah, the name applies. The University of Texas at El Paso or UTEP is part of the UT system. And we are located in El Paso, Texas, right on the border between Texas, Mexico, and sharing the border with New Mexico. So we're in a unique geographic location, which I'm hoping we'll talk about a bit later in the episode here.

We enroll about 24,000 students this year. 84% of those students identify as Hispanic or Latino. And around 83-84% come from this region, meaning El Paso County. About 55% are female, about 21,000 of our students are undergrads. And we are an R1 institution, meaning UTEP is of the highest caliber of research institutions in the country.

What makes us unique in that group is that we are the only open access R1 institution. And we are one of just a few Hispanic-serving institutions that are also R1 or top research universities in the group. Again, a few things that make us truly unique in the world of higher ed. And we're just so proud to serve the students of our region and really grateful to have strong and important partnerships like the one we have with Education at Work. And I know Jane will go into more detail about that.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah, and before we do, I do want to say, why is that special for somebody that's listening that goes, wait a minute, open access? Why did he bring that up, and why is that important for UTEP?

Luis Rodriguez: Yeah, absolutely. So UTEP prides itself on how many students we can include in our educational mission, not how many students we can exclude through criteria. We meet students where they are, and if they need some developmental work before they get started on credit work, absolutely. We have those resources. We have that support network.

But for many students in our region, if not for UTEP, they will not go to college, right? Because of financial constraints, some family commitments, so many other reasons. If not for UTEP, higher ed is not in their future. And so we take that commitment very seriously. And we achieved R1 status, not despite our student population, but because of who our students are, their resilience, their hard work, their family resources, their skills. And so that's why I brought that up. It really is important and an identifying part of our culture at UTEP.

Joe Sallustio: Very good. Well, thank you for that. Jane, I'm going to swing it over to you. Tell us all you want to tell us about Education at Work.

Jane Swift: So our mission is to enable college students from traditionally underserved communities to secure a high-quality job. And we do that through evidence-informed work-based learning programs. We're part of the Strada Education Foundation. And you may have seen their talent disrupted report that came out recently that shows that over 50% of graduates from four-year institutions under-place.

So students like I was, frankly, that's my motivation for working in education for the last almost 40 years and for doing this job now. I was a Pell Grant student whose life, both socially and economically, was transformed by college. And I continue to believe that college is the best tool that we have to help students to achieve economic and social upward mobility, which at the end of the day is critical to sustaining our American way of life, the American dream, not to be corny. And it's failing too many students. 

And so what Education at Work does is if you go read that talent disrupted report, one of the critical things that students need to do - it used to be a nice to do, but one of the critical things they need to do is to get some work experience where they can build skills and show how to apply them during their undergraduate years to further improve their opportunity. It's, you know, along with the right major, the right courses, it's super important to get some experience so that you can get that good first job. 

And we partner with terrific institutions like UTEP, which I will say is exceptional and really committed to this mission. So they've done a lot of work around one-to-one advising, or not to steal all your lines, but on my trip there, they've identified those critical, soft or durable skills. They've shown that you can in fact achieve those in a work-based experience. And we are really good partners with them that's allowed us to grow a program that at the end of the day, our corporate partners and UTEP, we serve, Discover in their financial services. 

And as an aside, we can get into this, Latino and Hispanic students are underrepresented in financial services. So exposing students to these types of careers and to these financial services organizations is also important. But we're also paying them and we're giving them tuition assistance. It's just, there are so many benefits to the work that we're doing with that ultimate goal of enabling college students to get that good first-time job. I just finished putting three students of my own, my daughters through undergraduate. And so I know that's what every parent is intending when they send their child to college or every student who works really hard to help pay for their college education.

Joe Sallustio: Amazing. Okay, so I'm going to pass it to Benny in a second to probably ask all the rest of the questions, but bring home the connective tissue between Education at Work and UTEP here. Jane, how did it work? How is Luis involved? You gave a lot of information all at once. At its core, Education at Work does what and how does UTEP fit into this piece?

Jane Swift: So we partner between Fortune 500 companies and campuses with large numbers of traditionally underserved students. And what we do is we hire those students. We train those students, we recruit those students, and we partner them with these Fortune 500 companies to create good jobs. We give them at least, you know, more than minimum wage. We also provide tuition assistance. 

So in September of 2023, we were expanding our Discover Financial Services relationship. And we partnered with UTEP and a local foundation to expand into the University of Texas El Paso market. We began with 29 students and we ended up at the end of last year with 173 students who are working for Discover Financial Services as employees of Education at Work. We currently have 144 students working right now and we're continuing to recruit as we go through the year, but that is more than half or almost half of all of our Discover Financial Services working students that have migrated to UTEP because of the strong relationship. 

I don't know how Luis got involved or who, 'cause I love Luis, are you doing here, Luis? But he does a great job 'cause he gave me, I had one of the best tours of a campus of my life and I haven't stopped talking about it.

Luis Rodriguez: That's great to hear, Jane. Yeah, so where we come in on the university side is primarily through our university career center, which reports to me. We partner with Education at Work to identify those students to apply for these opportunities and help make that connection. And what's great is that this is not just like another off-campus job at a retail space or some other location in the city. Education at Work really operates almost like an on-campus job, meaning they take student schedules into account. It's a very student-friendly environment, very supportive academically. 

They have a team of folks over there and I just spent some time with them last week actually showing me their own space as well. That crew really understands the student lifestyle, the demands, they understand the academic calendar. This is peak midterms time, this is finals time coming up. You're not going to get that kind of sensitivity and support at any random off-campus job. So these students aren't working for UTEP, but it really does feel like an on-campus job when it comes to the support network and just understanding what students need.

Joe Sallustio: All right, Benny, I'm going to pass it over to you, but I got to get everybody ready since this is your first official question. Everybody listening? Here we go. No pressure.

Benny Boas: Well, thanks, Joe. No, that's great. It's really interesting to hear that the jobs are also taking into consideration student schedules. I'm curious, how's the program affecting graduation rates? Are you seeing them increase, decrease, stay the same?

Jane Swift: I'm going to let Luis answer. I'll tell you, we have not done any studies on UTEP specifically. Our last voice of the student survey was done on our ASU students. And we've seen that our students in our ASU program that is longer-standing than UTEP have higher four-year graduation and six-year graduation rates than their peers at the same institution and less debt because students can earn up to $5,250 a year, which is quite a bit of money for a UTEP student through our, as Luis said, opportunities. 

So we are not out to solve the graduation problem globally or the affordability problem. We're out to solve the placement in a good first job, but a by-product is many of our students, you have to persist to graduation and doing it with less debt is one of the ways that you get that good first job. And I don't know if Luis wants to add something.

Luis Rodriguez: Yeah, all I'll just add here is you're right, Jane. So the partnership with UTEP is still so new that we haven't quite had a statistically significant amount of students actually go through the Education at Work process and graduate. So we don't have those numbers yet. We will have them within a couple of years, I think. But our own internal data shows that students who work on campus, and remember I likened working for Education at Work to working on campus, show significant gains in terms of four and six-year graduation rates, especially for students who might be considered high risk, meaning coming in with lower GPAs from high school.

Working on campus, working in a supportive environment has proven over and over again to be one of those factors that builds a sense of belonging, keeps students enrolled, builds excitement for enrolling in the next semester. And so we expect to see similar results here, but we'll have those in a couple of years.

Benny Boas: That's great. I've seen in my own work, I mean, I'll say that the programs that we offer are very different from the programs that are offered through UTEP and Education at Work. But sometimes when we see learners who come in without any financial consideration made on their end, so maybe they're fully grant funded, etc., it can actually adversely impact graduation rates. And I'm curious to just learn a little bit more about the average age of your learners. Are the folks who are coming through your programs generally adult? Are they in the workforce? Are they adult learners? Are they folks who are just going out to start their degree? Or where are you seeing sort of A, most of your population statistically coming in from? And then B, what populations do you actually see the most success from?

Luis Rodriguez: Sure. So the average age of our undergraduate population is 22. I don't know how that compares nationally. I guess that's maybe a year or two older than the average. As I mentioned, 84% of our students come from this region. Many of them come straight from high school, but we also have a lot of transfer students who come in with credit from the local community college system, El Paso Community College. Many of our students have worked before, and then they are pausing their careers to come back and earn that credential and add experience and really get the credentials they need to advance in their careers. 

In terms of where we're seeing success, really it's across the board. We have a really tight partnership in El Paso, not only with the community college system, but with our independent school district system. That happens when 80% of the local school teachers also happen to be UTEP graduates from our College of Education, right? It's a closed circle here. And so we have to work really closely to make sure that that support network is there starting from K through 12 all the way up through community college and into transition into the four-year institutions. 

We also have a really robust early college high school system here in El Paso where students can enter UTEP with an associate's degree already earned, 60 credit hours. And so those students are in a quite different position. They have a bit more flexibility. They tend to be very ambitious and want to take advantage of all of the different opportunities that UTEP can offer from study abroad to undergraduate research, etc. And those students tend to do quite well as well. So Jane, I'm not sure what you're seeing on your end from student employees.

Jane Swift: Yeah, so we're not guilt, right? So we're not dealing with the adult population that's already employed, that's going back to school. Most of the students that we seek to serve are those who need work experience and need work in order to sustain their college experience, right? And so what we're trying to do is marry the need of the financial stability of a job with the other desirable outcome of a better paying college-level job when you graduate. 

And we know from research done by America Succeeds, the work they've done with CompTIA in really talking to hundreds of employers that having that work experience and getting some of those critical, durable skills. I'll mention like the three that come up over and over, customer service, problem-solving and communication. And communication different from what you're doing in the classroom, right? So I love, right? Any professor who's having students stand up and present in front of the class, that's such an important skill. Obviously it's one I used as a former political person but that's very different from the type of communication that we're teaching students and that we're upskilling them with. 

You're on the phone with Discover Financial Services. Not everybody you're talking to is going to be happy and that you talk to wants to talk with you and so doing responsive listening, doing conflict management, the kinds of skills I'm sure, Benny, you never have to apply in the workforce, right? But things that are applicable to work. Really it's a different population in most ways. 

There's one of my motivations for coming to Education at Work. I so admire a lot of the work that folks like Benny are doing on alternatives to traditional school, to certification in technical careers. I love the work that's happening in middle school and high school where folks are really encouraging students to look at pathways, to look at careers. But one of the most overlooked populations that we're not bringing that same intensity around how do we skill build, what technical credentials do you need? Because traditionally we didn't think of that applying to the traditional four-year college going student in a traditional program of traditional young adult age. And remember, most of these students were in high school or early college when COVID hit. We've seen numbers rebound. So we now have higher levels of labor participation by high school students than we've had in many decades. But a lot of these students were pushed out of employment in high school or college.

Internships, paid internships are still far too hard to come by for far too many students, yet their impact is well known on outcomes. So those are the challenges that we're trying to address. There are a couple other folks. Year Up is a great organization in this space, but I am continuing to be surprised that the biggest number of our future workforce are students who are enrolled in college right now, traditional college. We have over 2 million students who are gonna graduate with a bachelor's degree this year. And Strada showed that over 50% of them are going to under-place. So there's a million. Yeah, right. A million students and guess what? Most of them are from traditionally underserved regions and they need the kinds of direction, skills, experience, mentoring, all of the above that we need to have lots of organizations like Education at Work out there sharing our best practices, reaching out to institutions like UTEP who've also made a commitment. 

So one of the things we didn't mention - our office is in an office building that is directly adjacent. I think it might be owned by the university. And so that's part of our partnership. And we just expanded the size of our office there. Even though most of our students work remotely, we can bring them in, we can create a sense of community. One of the things I love is that the terrific staff members that Luis mentioned, volunteer and go over and do mock interviews with all of the UTEP students, not just the students who work with us. So we're really working on this diverse pipeline of traditional aged, more or less, 22 to 27, traditional age college students who need work experience and I would say not just a job, but upskilling work experience in order to combine that with their high quality degree to get a good first job.

Joe Sallustio: Are you kidding me? No, I'm not. For a third straight year, the EDUp Experience will be recording live at Ellucian Live 2024. This year in San Antonio, Texas, April 7th through the 10th, illuminate, innovate, and inspire. That's the framework for the conference. Leaders from institutions around the world will converge at Ellucian Live 2024 to discover game-changing technology, share industry insights, and build powerful connections. It's time to explore higher education's greatest opportunities with future ready ideas, solutions, and best practices designed to drive transformation. You can register now at elive.ellucian.com. Epic.

Benny Boas: Yeah, I love that. You know, it's interesting because in my own line of work, I've seen that sector or that specific age group ignored in the conversation around workforce development. Sometimes that's because in some areas people might not believe that there is a seriousness that's required from an 18 year old to 22 year old to really learn those durable skills and the workforce skills that they can then apply. But I think in that conversation, what we highly ignore is the underserved areas of the population, right? The folks who are really looking at college as not only, you know, places to start their career, but also a place where they can earn income and support themselves and build towards that career. So specifically with first-gen Americans, right? Immigrant populations, folks from more underserved communities. It's not necessarily that they're looking at college as like a time where they're building towards their career. It's a time where they're building their career in general. 

I think that's a really wonderful mission and it's good to see the business alignment there. I wonder and I'm curious, I have a lot of questions around the types of businesses you work for or work with and how you even get them involved and what that means from, you know, a commitment level, whether that's you shouldering most of the responsibilities when it comes to structuring the program, etc. I mean, look, we have business partners as well. I think that we can all say that like, it's tough to get the ones who are really mission aligned and the ones that are great. And even then it's sometimes hard to get the horse to the water to drink. So it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it there's with so many players. It kind of reminds me of this question that I heard a product, one of the heads of product of Uber once described, which was like, when you look at like the Uber Eats model, you have so many actors, right? You have like the person creating the food, you have the person delivering the food, you have the person ordering the food, you have the restaurant, the cook, the guy who hands the bag off, whatever.

The point is, like when there are a lot of, you know, when there are a lot of actors, you know, concocting a script or when there's a lot of people putting together the motion of the vehicle, like the one that you're building and driving, it becomes more complicated and it becomes much more difficult to sort of align the interests and the impact.

I'm curious now sort of shifting away from that. Are the, like, how are you skill mapping? Like, okay, great. People are learning skills and they're, you know, people are getting the skills they need to get to where they want to next in their job. And then like, how are they displaying that? So how are you looking at, okay, well, you're learning customer service skills. That's amazing. And Jane, you know, I'm like you, if it wasn't for higher ed and getting into college with full, with the most of my tuition covered. Like, you know, I'm a first-gen American paycheck to paycheck household, etc., etc., wouldn't have that opportunity to be here today. And especially when I think about like the skills that I did learn during that time, like working in gas stations and whatever job I did during the summers, like they were important roles. And even though they're probably not as sophisticated as the ones that are coming through Education at Work, they were nonetheless really important for my own professional development.

The thing is, how do you map that? Like, how do I display, you know, that like my, actually my gas station role was, may have been more impactful than my internship that I did when I was a sophomore in college at like a film festival where they just had me making copies of crap that I didn't even care about for, you know, three months, whatever. Yikes! And the work I was doing at the gas station actually taught me how to interface with people and build relationships and work with really complex personalities. I'm just curious, like, how are you mapping through the lifetime of the learner, through their journey after college, showing that, demonstrating that to potential employers, etc.

Jane Swift: So first of all, you said something that I think is really important, right? I think there's a lot of misnomers about this generation, Generation Z college students, and folks get so caught up with, and I use this analogy, it'll probably get me in trouble, you know, kids on elite college campuses marching around protesting whatever in their Lululemon pants and their Canada Goose jacket and think that that is representative of an entire generation. And that is so patently unfair. And I would just really encourage you go visit UTEP. I had one of the most moving lunches. And when I was governor, my best days were when I would visit classrooms and actually hear about the work and apply the policy to the individuals. And there's a story that I heard at UTEP from a young woman who's a nursing student, not one of our students, that has moved me, motivated me, you know, since I left there. So maybe, Luis, can tell you a little bit about the students, because I do think that's one of the barriers within corporate America. They have a complete misperception about how ambitious, hardworking, committed many, if not most folks in this generation are. 

The one thing I will tell you on skill mapping is, this is again, UTEP is a great partner. They've done that work. I have, and I looked around before because I've been carrying it. I think it's a little further away in my backpack, but they have a card of the skills they're guaranteeing to their students. And they're similar to the ones we're hearing over and over. And I talked about the three.

We need to do a better job. And as you know, the industry is kind of a mess about sort of what credentials, especially in these soft and durable skills. How do you show them? How do you represent them? We are in the final stages of preparing to launch a pilot with ETS, where one of our goals is to assess your skills coming in. As we increase, we hope, your skills and give you additional skill building training as part of your work experience, going back and reassessing. So at least we can measure how both work and training together, increase those skills with some kind of valid assessment. And then we'll have to figure out how it applies. But if you look, I can't remember if it was Forbes or Fortune, but the number one skill or top three skill that employers across sectors are saying that they cannot find, and I would suggest they're looking in the wrong places, is customer service. That is correct. So that's one of the big three that we're working on. Luis, I don't know what you want to add.

Joe Sallustio: Luis, can I, I want to kind of just build a bridge here. Benny brought up first-gen students and you have 84 - I think you said 84 percent of your population is Latino or Latina. If you have worked with that population of students before, very family orientated, very - there can be some language barrier right because people have immigrated into the country. Maybe there's some language barrier. Students are first-gen in a lot of situations. When you talk about open access, you're talking about a whole other level of student support services, right? Because you have this first-gen student. What they do understand, Latino and Latina populations, is work. They work. They work hard. So they get it. They want their kid to work, right? So what they don't understand is something that none of us understand right now, is the FAFSA. You can't get it? Can't fill it out? Can't get it done? You don't even know if you can go to college right now and whether you can afford it. So I want to bring this to the current time period. You've got this Latino, Latina population, first-gen students needs the support, doesn't even understand how to how to pay for school right now. They know they need to work. You're dealing with a whole heck of a lot of issues all at once.

Luis Rodriguez: That's right. And while most players in the higher ed landscape might see that list that you just rattled off as full of deficits, we reject that thinking and we see that as a list of assets that our students are bringing with them to the university. They have strong support networks at home, caring and supportive families. They have work experience beyond what most 18, 19 year olds already have, as you mentioned. And real grit. Real grit and they're committed to their education. Oftentimes when students come to UTEP, it's not just a personal financial commitment or an immediate family commitment. It is an extended family investment to send that student to university and make it happen for them. 

So we embrace that. We love that because we know how that translates to valuable skills in the workplace and the skills that employers are looking for. So one thing that we do, so we know that about 73% or so of our students work while in college. Rather than be frustrated by that fact, we embrace it and we say, okay, great. We know that our students have to work. Can we create higher quality on-campus student employment experiences? Or can we find great partnerships like the one with Education at Work to create high-level employment opportunities that not only put money in their pocket, and let me tell you, this is not spending money. This is not pizza money. They are contributing this to their family household incomes, right? So not only puts money in their pocket, but gives them the skills that they need. 

And then we at UTEP take quite seriously the fact that we need to help our students make the connection between the experience and then articulating and expressing what that experience provided them. Many times students will go off on a great study abroad experience, for example, come back and how it translates is one or two lines on their resume. And so we have charged all of the department leads for our high-impact practices, right? Things like study abroad, research, etc. We have charged them with embedding reflective activity into those experiences so that when students come back, they know what they learned, how it can apply to other settings to help bridge that gap between having the experience and then articulating its value to other employers.

Joe Sallustio: All right, well, Benny's going to have to hold his question. I see him coming in on because we're going to have to interrupt this episode for another edition of the Ed Up Either or Experience. I'm going to play the music here in a second. And this is where I'm going to go around to each of you. And Benny, you can participate too. And I'm going to give you two words. You got to pick one, the other, or both. It's going to give us an insight into the way you think without you giving big long-winded answers. Let's see if this works. Come tell me if you can hear this. Okay, we're gonna start. Everybody's got it.

[Joe asks a series of "either/or" questions to the guests, which they answer briefly.]

Joe Sallustio: Well, there you have it, you guys. A little bit of fun to interrupt the serious questions. Now we know all sorts of things about these people. What power skills maybe is something we'll say more. We like the entrepreneur like strategy. What's that? What genders they are. Yes, we know that too. All the way back to the pre-episode recording that we'll never share, the conversation that we'll never share. Benny, back over to you. I'm assuming you mean back over to me because I'm going to ask a question.

Benny Boas: That well, yeah, I mean, that's a fairly good assumption, my friend. OK. Yeah, I kind of wanted to come back to the discussion we were having. I really liked talking about the assumptions that we have as a country that has, I think, went through many waves of higher education in terms of the type of ambition and enrollment and opportunities that have come in and out of the higher ed ecosystem over the last few decades.

I'm curious to sort of hear both of your thoughts on, sorry, I live in New York City and my office is in downtown. I'm curious to hear both of your thoughts on where you see the relationship between the student and the job. So is the work itself connected to the employer as it's generally like you have a manager and the manager is holding you to certain standards and KPIs or is there a less intense version of it? What's the intensivity of the program? And I guess I'm curious to know that because I want to know sort of what is the standard at which work should be held in early adult life? And is that a fair standard? And I'm curious just to hear both of your thoughts on that.

Jane Swift: Sure. I'll go first. So the National Governors Association actually has a definition of work-based learning, and they use the word authentic, that the work that you perform has to be authentic. You also asked about our business model. So oftentimes, we're competing against other staffing type agencies. The jobs that we put students in are pre-college level, right? Because these are students who are still in college, mid-skill jobs, but they are real jobs. The way to get corporate America to engage with us, yes, they believe in our mission. Yes, they're looking for a source of new, early and diverse early career talent, but we have to solve a staffing issue that they have today. And so our students in Discover, one of the UTEP students spoke eloquently, right, about the KPIs and the metrics she was being held to and how valuable that was to Ketsey as she got into this program. 

But one of the key components, I believe, of a high-quality paid work experience has to be its real authentic work. I will tell you that I believe we're leading the sector because it's all we do. I'm not going to be disingenuous. I have three terrific kids with a lot of privilege. And marshaling kids from the first day of college through to their first job is not for the faint of heart, right? Did we mention these are 18 to 24 year olds? Surprise. That was a good use of the sound effects. You know, and particularly as Luis said about the many strengths that his students bring, those strengths have to be nurtured. They have to be utilized in a way that you can bring them to bear in a work setting. And so we take on all the complexity. And I think you asked that question earlier. We take on all that complexity. We do everything from recruit, train, manage. We love having partners like UTEP so that the mentorship and the wrap-around services are not solely our responsibility. And that's part of what we look for when we look for university partners.

I will tell you, we have no shortage of colleges and universities who want to work with us because of the value that we bring to students. It's the quality of what the university also brings, both in the commitment to the student and to helping us to be successful with their students that makes a difference to us.

Luis Rodriguez: That's a fact. That's a fact. I agree, Jane, with everything that you just said. What I might add to that is that we are hearing from college students and emerging professionals, what they're looking for in employers in addition to authenticity, I totally agree with that, is an interest in their growth and professional development. I think emerging professionals want to know that there's an investment in their own professional trajectory, whether it's access to training, professional conferences, networks, mentoring even, anything that's gonna set them up for that growth and not just be seen as how can you be productive for my organization, but what's a long-term investment? That comes up over and over again. And again, another great facet to the Education at Work partnership because students do get that in spades when they work there.

Joe Sallustio: Well, you guys, we've got two final questions for you both. We don't want to go past the time. We know you're busy serving students, and that's what matters most. Number one, and Luis, we'll start with you. I'll give you each this question first and then give you the final one. Open mic for you. What else do you want to say about UTEP, your students, the work, your partnership, anything at all about UTEP?

Luis Rodriguez: Yeah, we just see it as a privilege to support our students. And partnerships like this are the perfect example of how we meet students where they are in advancing our mission of access to an excellent education and making an impact on their lives and in our communities, right? When so many of our students come from this region, it's impacting our own city, our own region, our own environment and community. And so we take that so seriously and don't take for granted that this is a major investment for our students when they're maybe not just first-gen college going, but first-gen to the country and navigating so many levels of the world around them. And they are delivering in the classroom, on the job, in labs. They are performing at the same level, if not higher as students who don't have many of these other challenges and financial constraints. And so that just makes us proud to do the work that we do here. And we hope to tell the UTEP story just as much as we can because as the demographics of the country shift and more and more universities start to see more first-gen college going students, more Latino students, more students of color in general enroll on their campuses. We hope that they see UTEP as a model for how to make this work because we've been doing this for years. We're committed to it. It's not by chance. It does take hard work, but we want to partner and help lead the way.

Joe Sallustio: Jane, anything else? Open mic, you want to say about Education at Work?

Jane Swift: I will just say that if there are any early career talent, HR managers, anybody with workforce unfilled needs that's listening to this, whether you're in the Texas area or beyond, we are able to source incredible talent to solve your problems now and to create an early career pipeline. And I am telling you the stories of the resilience, the commitment. It's what I hear all day long on a macro level that employers are looking for. And we are sourcing that. We also need many more nonprofits, for-profits, organizations to join in this work because there is an enormous need. We get nearly 6,000 applications a year in just the four geographic areas we're looking in with the partners we have. And we don't have 6,000 jobs a year, but I just told you a million students could benefit from having this type of experience each year. So this is a huge problem to be solved. And it's important for communities like El Paso, states like Texas, but also our country that we find those solutions and help these students to achieve the success they're looking for.

Joe Sallustio: All right, for the final question, we'll go in reverse. Jane, to you. What do you see for the future of higher education or post-secondary education, however you want to define it?

Jane Swift: So I think they're going to have to continue to have partnerships. The velocity of change is so fast that I actually am not a huge defender of the status quo, but it's unfair to expect institutions who have so many different constituencies to serve to be able to keep up with the velocity of change in the private sector. So in order to prepare students for the challenges that exist in the workplace, they're gonna have to form partnerships, whether it's with us, with employers, with other third party institutions, because man, I mean, who was thinking about AI two years ago, and now I can't have a single conversation. I just had to work it in here, so I could keep saying that, but I can't have a single conversation without AI dominating the debate. And that's just one example.

Joe Sallustio: All right, Luis.

Luis Rodriguez: Jane, I love your point about partnerships. I will add to that that I think higher ed in general needs to adapt to the changing enrollment that's coming their way and meeting students where they are and learning how to support those students. If they are at all concerned about enrollment and meeting those targets and reaching out to students who are interested in higher ed, they're going to have to learn how to do it in an authentic way that supports them to meet their goals. Yeah, that's what I would say.

Joe Sallustio: Benny, what'd you think of this conversation, my friend, your first time guest co-hosting?

Benny Boas: I felt incredibly overwhelmed. It was really scary. I know it was awesome. This is lunacy. I mean, the work that you're doing is amazing. I love it. Obviously, it's super impactful. I'd love to see more participants too, right? Like I'd love to see it get better and bigger and roll out at more schools. I think that there's a lot of work to be done both in universities and four-year colleges, but then also in community colleges as well, where a lot of these folks start their higher education experience. In general, the best part of what you do is that you're incentivizing earning and learning. It's a very hard thing to kind of get right. And very few, I think, have done it very effectively. So, you know, I think that all the kudos and power to both of you. And, you know, would love to see it roll out at more schools. Hopefully one day we'll see it in every institution. And like I said, I just, you know, I'm curious to see how it plays into the community college two-year space as well and affects enrollment and, you know, potential transfer opportunities, etc. But yeah, this has been an awesome conversation.

Joe Sallustio: Ladies and gentlemen, he's my guest co-host. He's Benny Boas. He is the CEO of Upright Education. Benny, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on with our two amazing guests. He's Luis Rodriguez, and she is Jane Swift, UTEP and Education at Work respectively. With all of this great conversation, we hope you guys had a good time on the podcast today because we've got to have fun with what we do, don't we?

Jane Swift: Had a great time. Thank you so much, John. 

Benny Boas: Jane, great to see you.

Jane Swift: It's nice to see you. Hopefully I'll see you in person soon.

Joe Sallustio: Ladies and gentlemen, you've just ad-upped. It's time to register for Ellucian Live 2024, April 7th through 10th in San Antonio, Texas. Illuminate, innovate, inspire, explore higher education's greatest opportunities with future ready ideas, solutions, and best practices designed to drive transformation. Register now at elive.ellucian.com. This conference is going to be epic.