How Is One University Turning “Dead-End Jobs” Into Degrees for Aspiring Teachers? | Joe Ross

Reach University is rethinking higher education with a simple but powerful idea: turn jobs into degrees. In this episode of the getting smart podcast, Joe Ross shares how apprenticeship degrees can help districts grow their own teachers by investing in the talent already in their buildings. From paraeducators to support staff, this model creates affordable pathways into the profession while strengthening local workforce pipelines. The episode explores teacher prep, higher education, lifelong learning, and new pathways that expand opportunity without adding debt.

Outline

• (00:00) Introduction: Joe Ross & Reach University
• (07:37) How the Apprenticeship Degree Model Works
• (17:24) Expanding Beyond K-12: Healthcare & Workforce Equity
• (26:43) Next Steps: How to Get Started with Reach University

Introduction: Joe Ross & Reach University

Victoria Andrews: Today we’re joined by Joe Ross, the president of Reach University, a school with a mission to turn jobs into degrees, which I absolutely love, through the Apprenticeship Degree program. This model allows students to continue working, honors the skills they have and are developing in their current roles or positions, and allows them the freedom, flexibility and autonomy to learn in classes and modules, either on the weekends or outside of their normal work hours. Through his leadership, the university aims to address national talent shortages by turning jobs into degrees, focusing on affordability, relevance and creating sustainable workforce pipelines for rural and under-resourced communities. What I deeply appreciate about Reach University is that they do all of this at a fraction of the cost of your typical university. So we are so excited to have this conversation. At Getting Smart, we’re huge believers in young people’s opportunity to learn beyond the four walls of a traditional school, and normally that looks like honoring what they do at civic organizations or their places of worship, or even as entrepreneurs who have businesses. Like, how can those skills be honored? And to have this same conversation but with adults today is just like my, my skin is tingling. So I cannot wait to dive into more of this with Joe Ross. Thank you for being with us today, Mr. Ross.

Joe Ross: It’s a great pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Victoria Andrews: So Reach University’s mission is to turn jobs into degrees. How does someone who has a background in finance and business, but also a service background because you did serve in the military,

Joe’s Journey to Becoming an Accidental College President

Victoria Andrews: how did you land at becoming a university president? And then when you do mention that your university’s mission is to turn jobs into degrees, how do people typically react when you say that?

Joe Ross: I almost want to answer that question first because it seems to really land immediately when we describe the work as turning a job into a degree instead of the other way around. But it started as a slogan six years ago when we came together. It was, it was a tagline. And last year our accreditor approved it as a mission statement.

So it actually is our mission statement at Reach University to turn jobs into degrees. And how we got there and how I got here, because I am, as you, as you alluded to, kind of the accidental college president. I don’t think this was in my deck of cards or anyone else’s who knew me. But six years ago we had a group of folks with a chip on their shoulder about teachers and the need for every young person in the country to have a great teacher.

I m- I … When I, when I last spoke with you I shared my kind of self-psychoanalysis about why I have that chip on the shoulder. I, I shared it in my testimony last week on Capitol Hill. I, I was adopted when I was four years old, and in my new household, I think after feeling sorry for myself and wondering why my last name had changed, I probably in my little head thought, “Wait a minute, you can change your last name.

You can make your own life. You can decide who you are,” and education seems to be the way to do that because the people in this new household had careers, and they had degrees, and they had power. And I wanted all three of those things. And so I became a relentless nerd. I thought I was a great student. I had an attitude about being a great student, I think.

And I found out about a decade ago when the woman who I’ve called mom since I was four years old was visiting my house, regaling my kids about what a hellraiser I was growing up. And I was like, “Mom.” And she says, “Do you know when you were in second grade your teacher called the house at the end of the year?

And when I picked up the phone she was in tears.” And again I was like, “Mom.” And she said, “She was in tears because you passed the end-of-year reading assessment.” And I thought, I didn’t expect that sentence to end that way. But I remembered that teacher, and I thought to myself, “What was going on in second grade that brought her to tears when I passed a reading assessment?”

And I had this flashback of being taken out of class with her to play games with a few other kids every day, and I realized at that moment as an adult that I was not playing games, that I had been pulled out for reading intervention. And not only did I never know that, but she taught me how to read and gave me an attitude about myself as a reader, and I went on to graduate from high school and from college, and then I chose to go into the Navy for eight years, and then I chose to go to graduate school and that set me on a course to where I am today, privileged to be leading, I think, a kind of a campaign nationally to turn workplaces into learning places and upward mobility for everyone.

And I, I think, you know, I thought when I realized all this, but for Miss Fenner, that was her name, would all that, any of that, have happened? And everybody had some chip on their shoulder when we started Reach University. We saw, we saw as many as, by our analysis, 15 million people walking into school buildings every day where multiple classrooms lacked a permanent teacher.

And at the same time, we saw that in those very same buildings, there were human beings who could be the teachers we need, and they were working as paraeducators, or they were working as library aides or English language aides. Some of them were working in the lunchroom. Some of them were bus drivers.

We actually ended up enrolling a famous custodial worker who was the person everybody went to for detention, and then he would tutor everybody, and everybody knew he should be a teacher. So there were all these people working in schools, and many of them had shared the same story. They had chosen that job, a low-paid job in many cases, a dead-end job in many cases.

They’d chosen that job in their community instead of a degree because they had

Victoria Andrews: Hmm.

Joe Ross: to. And we thought, why not, why not eliminate that binary? What if you didn’t have to choose between a job and a degree? Because if you could turn your job as a paraeducator into a degree, not only could you rise up and become a teacher, but you’d have this triple-generation effect where you would provide an educator to your students, you would yourself see upward mobility, and then your own family would benefit as well.

And so that was the inspiration that we all had when we got started, and it’s been a journey.

Liberal Arts, Liberal Minds & the Role of AI

Victoria Andrews: I love that you guys look at learning environments, especially schools, as asset-rich as opposed to asset-deficient. Because as a former educator and campus administrator, sometimes that’s the mindset we adopt where it’s like we’re just grateful for whatever anybody gives us, and we’re just gonna, you know, make it, make the, you know, the can-do attitude.

Joe Ross: Yeah.

Victoria Andrews: Nothing wrong with that, but sometimes we overlook the brilliance that’s in that space and we tend to seek help from outside instead of acknowledging all of those amazing people, like you said, that custodial member of the staff, that bus driver, that paraprofessional, that front office secretary who knows everybody, whose, you know, level of emotional intelligence is super high and, but just didn’t, you know, for whatever reason, didn’t continue or, like you said, just

whatever, however life just shook out for them, like, this is the job that they have, and this is where they, they landed. And so knowing that Reach University creates these amazing pathways and at Getting Smart we’re, we’ve been on a campaign for several years for just expanding pathways for young people, but to hear that being expanded for students, I mean, for adult learners just

How the Apprenticeship Degree Model Works

Victoria Andrews: can you share a little bit about what that actually looks like in action day to day for a district or a school that might be interested?

Joe Ross: Yeah. A- a- and first I wanna just pull the thread on what you mentioned about teachers coming from somewhere else, because that’s exactly what we found in the communities where we started, in rural communities in Louisiana and the Arkansas Delta. This, this narrative that teachers and nurses and other professionals, they’re not from here.

They come from some other place. And what a model like this does is allow people to serve the community that they live in, that they’re from. They don’t have to leave their home, their job or their community, and they don’t have to go into debt,

Victoria Andrews: Yeah.

Joe Ross: to become, to become a teacher. But from the perspective of a district, I, I, I like that you asked what does it look like from them.

I, I could give you five steps here in the district experience for superintendents who may be listening, and principals and school-site leaders. The first thing is buy-in to the idea, which is usually not that hard, right? Begin to see everybody in the building differently, not as a paraeducator or a library aide, but as an educator, right?

Someone who can rise up in a developmental way. I had a principal in Deer Park, Texas, say to me that after implementing this program with Reach University and an apprenticeship program, she looks at every person in the building differently. So that’s step one, is imagining everybody in the building as a potential teaching talent.

The second step generally is we, we don’t recruit students and who we call candidates off the street. We do not do online advertising. We work with our district partners and our charter partners to shoulder tap. Like, they are the ones identifying the people in the building who they could imagine stepping up into a role as a teacher.

And step three is patience. This is a two- to four-year process. If someone has an associate degree, it will take two years. If they have no college credit, it will take four years for them to have the bachelor’s degree and the teaching credential that they need. Apprenticeship is something that requires patience from a leader.

In Germany, where there’s a lot of apprenticeship that we look to as an example of a culture that has work-based pathways, folks wait a full year to get the car that they bought, right? It’s just part of the culture there. They order a car, and it comes a year later. So that, that patience is, is an important thing.

And then for a school-site leader who has to fill seats right now, hire right now, it’s a balance. You gotta get people in classrooms, but you also have to invest in what your talent strategy will look like. And then finally, a candidate who goes through this, and we can talk about their perspective, they’re going to have a clinical experience either in the form of a teacher residency, an alternative teacher certification pathway at the end, right?

The last year or so. Or a residency as part of their credentialing. But for two to three years before that, they are earning their liberal arts, liberal studies degree, which is what a teacher needs. And so understanding that they’re, that they’re doing their job as they’re doing it, but they’re also connecting history and math and science and social science to the work, and they’re observing.

But they’re not really impacting the school’s operations or their budget while they’re doing that. They’re just embedded within it. And then finally, you get a, you get a first-year teacher who will look like a third-year teacher at least because they’ve been in the building for at least three years, if not 10.

Victoria Andrews: Which is huge. Again, as a former campus administrator, that first year of a teacher, like you, you know, there’s so many supports that you’re providing them because for many of them it’s their first time on a campus,

Joe Ross: That’s right.

Victoria Andrews: classroom

Joe Ross: That’s right.

Victoria Andrews: And so you guys have just that model. They don’t have to get to know the culture of the campus.

They don’t have to get to know the principal, the leadership or even the students. And that matters because anybody that’s a great educator knows just, just how important relationships and the culture of a campus are. But if you’re fully embedded in that, you kind of like circumvent it, but in the most intentional way.

Joe Ross: Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Victoria Andrews: Like

Joe Ross: Yep.

Victoria Andrews: skip over it, you just are fully entrenched in it as you’re continuing to grow and excel, and I love that. That, that, that, I also appreciate deeply that it is liberal arts, where it is like this is a very different approach for many people that go into the education profession.

Joe Ross: Yep.

Victoria Andrews: So there you are getting exposed to different content areas and that, that critical thinking, that productive struggle with different concepts and not just like, “Hey, this is the box. We’re gonna just like, you know, move you along in that way.”

Joe Ross: Different concepts, different points of view. That productive struggle with testing things not as final truths, but as hypotheses. John Dewey talked about experience and education, and it, people… I have the book here. And it’s, it’s worth a read. But again, I’m sure many people have already read this.

But read it again because one of the things he talks about when he says theory and practice is actually it’s theory. It’s not rote application of theory to practice. It’s treating ideas that are not final truths as theories, and then applying the scientific method to,

Victoria Andrews: it

Joe Ross: to learn and then to make sense of it, and that is a lot of what liberal arts is about, too, right?

It’s about thinking about what you can do across different fields of knowledge. It is the content teachers need to know. You need to know history. You need to know math. But it’s also a conversation not just with the content itself, but it’s a conversation with other human beings. That’s what the liberal arts is because you wanna have that flexibility of mind and the creativity and the encounter with different perspectives.

That’s, that’s what makes higher education higher, and it makes great teachers, too.

Victoria Andrews: It does because if you’ve experienced that as a teacher, then you are more inclined to want your students to experience that same thing. Colleague Rebecca Middles and I, we are both, like, huge into liberal arts, and so we are such advocates for it. And then just recently there was an article, I forget by who, that came out, especially in the age of AI, of just, like, the need for liberal arts education to have that healthy discourse, to have that, that, that dialogue to just honor and, like you said, apply that thinking to different con- So you’re saying everything that I wanna hear, Joe.

Like, I’m fangirling.

Joe Ross: before it became cool though. Like, I have to say that, like, AI is giving rise to a new look at the liberal arts because people were wondering, what are humans for, right? And the hu- and the liberal arts I think provide a path for us to answer that question. And so it’s an interesting moment in time where AI is actually ironically giving energy to the liberal arts movement again, which is great.

Hmm.

Victoria Andrews: It is. Like it, it’s, it’s kind of an interesting cheerleader of sorts

Joe Ross: right

Victoria Andrews: for the liberal arts

right now.

Joe Ross: yeah

Victoria Andrews: My goodness. As you mentioned before you recently appeared before the US House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development to discuss REACH and its impact and its approach to workforce development. And with REACH sitting at the intersection of higher education, workforce and equity because like you mentioned before, it’s like you guys are working with communities that, you know, some people from the outside look at

asset-deficient.

Joe Ross: Mm-hmm.

Victoria Andrews: so can you just, how do you hold all three of those together without losing the focus and then keeping, you know, turning jobs into degrees as the North Star?

Joe Ross: Yeah. You know what’s interesting in higher education is higher ed has always had to grapple with different stakeholders. It’s not a simple enterprise. In the traditional model, we think of parents as well as the student, as well as the employer, as well as the regulator, right? It’s always been complicated.

You’ve had to, like, bring all those stakeholders together and then deliver what a human being deserves in terms of their dignity, their upward mobility and their access. And so what’s different in our world is that one of the major stakeholders there is an employer, right? That, that’s a big mindset shift.

And so how do you engage an employer and then also uplift a candidate so they have the opportunity that they deserve? And with regard to an employer, they are generally there because of their workforce needs, and so we have to acknowledge that. A parent may be there in the old model and might be there for the love of their child or to brag about their child, but an employer is there because of their,

Victoria Andrews: ma’am

Joe Ross: needs.

The candidate is there to get a job, yes. But as a higher education institution, we would do a disservice if all we did was train someone for the first job. And so it’s important to measure that first job, and it’s important to measure the wage gains, and we’re all for that. But if you wanna talk about what’s the promise that people deserve to be delivered in this country, it’s, it’s the lifelong upward mobility and the ability to sort of be the author of your own life, and higher ed has an obligation to think of that as well.

And so when we do our work, we are thinking very much about how to balance that. How do we balance the near-term objectives of an employer, the near-term job ambitions of a learner? But also, how do we also, using the liberal arts, for example, equip that human being to have the lifelong human flourishing that they deserve?

What, what we find as a great advantage of this model, if we do all that right, is that it is place-based, which gives rise to incredible representation of local communities in professional roles in those communities. And so our candidate population reflects the lived experience and the backgrounds of the place that they come from and the place that they call home.

Which means that they can relate to students in their classrooms, and they can provide an example of what’s possible to those students and to their own children about what’s possible as well. And so it’s, I think, in many ways easier to deliver on all these promises that you asked about when you construct a higher ed model the way we have in the workplace in local communities.

Expanding Beyond K-12: Healthcare & Workforce Equity

Victoria Andrews: While the majority of our conversation has centered around the education industry, I know that you guys are looking to expand offerings into other industries. Can you share a little bit about that too, Joe?

Joe Ross: Well, the sheer economics of this and the market drivers of this have to do with the occupations that require a degree for you to enter them. Professions generally, when I ask people, “How would you define a profession?” people come up with interesting answers. But one of the things that we should understand about professions, including teaching and healthcare professions, is that the gates to that profession are guarded by the profession itself.

And many of these professions, for good reason, choose to impose an education requirement for you to enter. And I think we want that actually, right? We want our nurses to have a level of higher education so that we can trust them, and we want our teachers to have a level of higher education so that we know that they have the content knowledge and the background and the facility of engaging with different people and all those things, right?

So we want those things. So education when it comes to work-based learning, K-12 education is a natural spot because it is a profession. And a degree is and will continue to be required. In healthcare, very similar, right? So we’re stepping into healthcare. We just launched the Apprenticeship College of Health with our partners, the Healthcare Training Fund in Washington State, which is a

Victoria Andrews: Congratulations.

Joe Ross: industry intermediary that has labor and employers at the table together to create upward mobility for the workforce in healthcare systems, starting in behavioral health.

And one fun fact in behavioral health, just as in teaching, you have a class of job called paraprofessional. There are paraprofessionals in behavioral health and mental health who if they rise up can become mental health counselors, just as there are paraprofessionals in schools who if they rise up can become teachers.

Victoria Andrews: Awesome. Well, congratulations on launching that, and I hope that you guys continue to have similar if not greater success than you’ve had in the industry of education, and continue just to expand those offerings. Joe, can you share a little bit about what you would consider is, like, the ideal candidate for,

Joe Ross: Mm-hmm.

Victoria Andrews: Reach?

Like, what,

Joe Ross: Yeah.

Victoria Andrews: what is the demographic of that, that student?

Joe Ross: Yeah. So, I think the last time we checked, the average age was 37. The overwhelming percentage of them are, are, are parents. Many of them are single parents. Well over 65% are Pell eligible, which is interesting because by definition they have a full-time job, and they’re Pell eligible, right?

So the salary for a paraeducator in Louisiana can be $20,000. And with your family, you’re eligible for Pell. And as I said earlier, the demographics represent local communities where we are. And so if you go to New Orleans, our candidate population looks like New Orleans. If you go to

Victoria Andrews: Yeah.

Joe Ross: Alabama, it looks like northwest Alabama, which by the way, is majority Hispanic now.

If you go to name your place, we, we have a population that represents that place. But as I said, 65% plus are Pell eligible. And so this is a population that has economic need, and the opportunity to step into a professional role means service to their community, but also means a different life going forward.

Potentially a 100-times change in their lifetime earnings as a comparison to the investment they have to make because our affordability is so radical, right? It’s a great return for them, and that makes a big difference.

Victoria Andrews: Again, I know you mentioned you have partnerships out even in Texas where I’m at, at Deer Park.

Joe Ross: Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Andrews: Did not know that, but I think that’s amazing, and I’m gonna

Joe Ross: Come visit.

Victoria Andrews: I

Joe Ross: Yeah. Like, we’re gonna hope to, we’re gonna have a, we, we, with our partners there we often have site visits, so you can come on by and maybe bring the camera with you and do a special edition of the podcast. Yeah.

Victoria Andrews: I would love to just hear what it’s like from that campus of just to go through that program and to see

Joe Ross: Yep.

Victoria Andrews: cultivate teachers, like, from the ground up

right then and there. Th- so we have so many different types of listeners, Joe, and something that we also discuss at Getting Smart are just what we call the conditions of success. Like, when we think about gardening or, you know, like, hey, you have to have the right type of s- I’m a plant mom. So, yeah … you have to have the right type of soil, you have to have, you know, proper sunlight, and whatever the case may be. When we think about the conditions of success for a district or a site, what are some of those conditions?

I know you shared the steps of it, and I really did appreciate the highlighting of, like, that positive mindset that this is, you know, they’re not a teacher yet. But what are some other, like, cultural or campus conditions that might need to be necessary or in

place?

Joe Ross: I, th- I, I think it needs to be acknowledged that there are structural conditions that favor this model, and I’ll name some of them, right? So first, every district that we have surveyed typically will have three to five times as many employed workers in non-degree roles than they have vacancies for teachers. Meaning you’ve got more paras, and you’ve got more library aides, and more lunchroom workers, and more people in all the other roles we talked about than vacancies for teachers by a multiple, by a multiple, right?

So if a fraction of them become part of your talent pipeline, you have a pathway to not having a teacher shortage. So that’s a structural reality, and it’s backed up by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which says we have at least 1.3 million classroom aides in this country, and depending on who you, who you read, we have 50,000 to 300,000 structural teacher vacancies.

So there’s a structural talent opportunity here that is, is the same everywhere we’ve looked. The other structural reality is that there are unfilled positions in every school that create a budget opportunity to invest in talent pipelines, right? So at a minimum, if, if there is a cost, and generally the cost is, as I said, I don’t know if I mentioned this, but affordability is so important to us.

No one pays more than $75 out of pocket a month. Everything’s covered by the Pell Grant. In Texas, it’s covered by the PREP allotment, which is an investment in talent pipelines. And so even if an employer were to contribute $75 a month to match the learner or $2,000 or $3,000 a year, there generally tends to be resources for that structurally right now in most places, most states.

It does help when the state has a funding mechanism like Texas does for teacher talent development that’s, that’s, that’s place-based. So those things are there, which leaves you with the cultural question that you raised, right?

What, what is the culture of the school and the district?

As I said earlier, this is a long-term structural change to talent strategy, right? It’s not a quick fix. And so there has to be a long-term willingness to invest in talent over time while doing the short-term things that is, that you need to do. A second, I, I’ll say it again, believe in people.

Believe that the people you have can rise up, but also create pathways where they can, such that you recruit ambitious, driven people who wanna serve their communities. Because when a paraeducator job is not a dead-end job but a developmental job, imagine who applies for that job. And where these exi- where, where districts have done that, they get people knocking on their door.

And then third, this is critical. This model works where there’s someone in the school district who is championing, who is a champion of the model, right? That sometimes is a superintendent. It’s sometimes a principal. It’s sometimes a teacher. It is sometimes the head of HR. But there needs to be someone who actually makes this a priority and, and, and just walks through walls to get people’s attention around it.

And where we don’t have a champion, it stalls. It’s the difference between having a couple people in a program

Victoria Andrews: Mm-hmm.

Joe Ross: for example, in Deer Park or in I guess Sheldon, is that near you? Sheldon ISD?

Right. So in Sheldon ISD there’s 60 to 70 people participating in a program like this with Reach and our partners.

That is 10 times the, on a per capita basis, the entire state of Tennessee in their teacher apprenticeship program. So as compared to the number of teachers in Tennessee and the number of teachers in Sheldon, right, the, the number of school employees in the pathway is 10 times, right? Because there’s championship in that district, and it makes a critical difference.

And so that’s what I’d say. Hmm.

Victoria Andrews: miss and knowing that there is a nationwide teacher shortage and the opportunity to grow your own is right there.

Joe Ross: Mm-hmm.

Victoria Andrews: And for some districts and for some campus and site leaders, it’s just they don’t… You don’t know what you don’t know.

Like I remember finding out about you guys at South By Southwest

this

Joe Ross: yeah

Victoria Andrews: and I was blown away.

I was just like, “Wait a minute, how have I not heard about this?” And then finding out that there are so many districts that are taking advantage of this near I was just like, “Oh my gosh, how is this, you know,

how is this possible?” So the hearing where you appeared before the subcommittee, I loved your ABCs, the affordability, you know, just

Joe Ross: Based in the workplace, credit for work, yep.

Victoria Andrews: Yes. I was just like, “Oh my gosh, this makes so much sense.” And so for the,

Next Steps: How to Get Started with Reach University

Victoria Andrews: the site leader or the superintendent or the organization that is wondering, “Okay, I, I’m listening to this. I’ve done my research. I have an extra tab on my computer. I’m researching Joe and Reach University. I’ve seen the things now. What are my next steps? Like what do I need to do to actually make it a reality so that I can have that para?” And they may be thinking of somebody right now as they’re listening that would be like, “Oh, they’re… This is, this is the catalyst that’s gonna move them from here to here,” and knowing that it’s not going to be more debt for that person too because I do appreciate that, that humanistic side of just like the world we’re living in right now, costs are rising. You know, whether it’s just, just living is more

expensive and, and you don’t want to put that undue burden on people that just have that heart for education, the heart for students. So what are some of the next steps that, that they can do right now?

Joe Ross: Right now, okay, let me name the states we’re in because it’s different for the states we’re in. We are in California and Colorado and Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee. I think I got all of them there. So in those states, we can be part of your talent strategy right now.

And I, I would invite you to just email me, [email protected], and I’ll put you in touch with the right people. And we’re happy to have a conversation. And again, so that everyone understands, those ABCs stand for three things that come from apprenticeship, and they define how our model works.

Affordability is A. There’s no student debt in the model. Learners pay no more than $75 a month out of pocket, and then the rest is covered by a combination of contributions from workforce boards and sometimes employer contributions, but the entire cost is structured to be affordable for everybody involved.

B is based in the workplace the whole time. Your employees are eligible if you’re a school district or charter school. And then C is credit for learning at work, which means that we are connecting theory and practice even when we’re just teaching math and, and, and history as a content matter. So if that sounds interesting we are excited to, to be in touch.

Now, if you’re not in one of those states, we have the National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree is working with higher ed providers who are doing similar models in alignment with us in several other places. So there may be something going on in your state. I, I hope I mentioned Colorado. There, there are other providers in Colorado in addition to us, as an example.

But, you know, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, there are a lot of places where work like this is happening and, you know, professional learning communities with Reach and these providers. So I’d be happy to be helpful to anyone listening and get you in touch with someone. Mm-hmm.

Victoria Andrews: So if you are in any of those states, you no longer have an excuse. Reach out to Joe. He is very responsive. I am a living witness to that, and his team is as well. And if you’re, especially if you’re, you’re… This is the summertime, so I know, you know, a lot of superintendents and campus leaders are like, “Hey, we’ve got X amount of shortages.” We’re already looking at those numbers. People aren’t transferring. The portal might be closed where you are. You’re grappling with what are you gonna do, and you have some talent on your campus. There is brilliance in your backyard. And so just capitalize on that by just reaching out to Joe and his team, Reach University, making it affordable. Capitalize on those ABCs. And who knows, in two to four years, that teacher shortage is just going to literally solve itself. So thank you, Joe, so much for sharing. Thank you for your energy. Thank you for your mission of just really just honoring the amazing work of the people that are already in those amazing learning environments and institutions, and then giving them the opportunity for not just an increase in finances, but generational wealth can be started, social capital is gained, and just pouring and reinvesting into the communities from which they came as well.

So thank you so much.

Joe Ross: Victoria, it’s always a pleasure to talk with you, and I really enjoyed this conversation, and thanks for shining a light on the work.

Victoria Andrews: Of course. Have a great one. Thank you, listeners.

Guest Bio

Joe Ross

Joseph Edelheit (Joe) Ross began his service as the first president of Reach University on January 18, 2021 and is also the Chief Executive Officer of the university. In his first two years, Reach launched two groundbreaking apprenticeship-based bachelor degrees, saw undergraduate enrollment grow by over 900%, secured over $30 million in private and public grant commitments, and established the university as the nation’s leader in advancing the Apprenticeship Degree as a new model for higher education and workforce development. Along with founder Mallory Dwinal-Palisch, President Ross developed and coined the Reach Method, the university’s approach to ensuring Apprenticeship Degree quality and access, and enshrined the university’s commitment to affordability without student debt. President Ross and his academic team also established the university’s distinctive single-subject semester model and uniquely frictionless transfer policies.  

Links

• LinkedIn
• Reach University