An Educated Guest

What should students expect in return for their investment in college? In Episode 96 of An Educated Guest, Todd Zipper sits down with Elise Awwad, President and CEO of DeVry University, to explore that question through the experience of working adults. From her start as an admissions advisor to leading a university serving more than 32,000 learners, Elise shares how student stories have shaped her...

What does it take to turn an entry-level job into a pathway to the middle class? In Ep.95 of An Educated Guest, Todd Zipper speaks with Barb Clapp, CEO of Dwyer Workforce Development, about a model designed to address two connected challenges: limited access to economic opportunity and persistent healthcare staffing shortages. After selling her communications business, Barb partnered with entrepre...

Has American higher education already reached its peak? And if so, can colleges and universities reinvent themselves before it's too late? In this episode of An Educated Guest , Todd Zipper welcomes Bryan Alexander, senior scholar at Georgetown University, author, and higher education futurist, to examine the demographic, economic, technological, and societal forces reshaping the sector. Draw...

Why do promising new models of education emerge, demonstrate results, and then struggle to scale? In Episode 93 of An Educated Guest, Todd sits down with Thomas Arnett of the Clayton Christensen Institute to explore why K–12 education has proven so resistant to disruption and what it will take to create meaningful, lasting change. Thomas and Todd dig into some of the biggest experiments happening...

What if the future of assessment is not simply about creating better tests, but about measuring what truly matters? In Episode 92, Todd Zipper speaks with Amit Sevak, CEO of ETS, about the organization’s evolution from the Educational Testing Service into a global measurement and talent-solutions organization. Amit explains why ETS acquired ACT, how WorkKeys can strengthen pathways from high schoo...

When Dan Elsener became president of Marian University in 2001, the institution had roughly 1,100 students, significant financial challenges, and what he calls “one foot in the financial grave and the other on a banana peel.” More than 25 years later, Marian has become a growing, ambitious university built around a simple conviction: universities should not exist merely to survive. They should tak...

What if instead of funding schools, we funded students and families—and gave them the power to build an education around what each child actually needs? In this episode of An Educated Guest , Todd Zipper sits down with Adam Peshek , Vice President of Education at Stand Together , to explore that idea and why the traditional one-size-fits-all model of education is increasingly being challenged by f...

What if the biggest problem with the way we manage people is that we're measuring the wrong thing? In this episode of An Educated Guest , Todd Zipper sits down with Fouad ElNaggar, co-founder and CEO of Array, to explore his provocative argument that the workforce needs to move from hours to outcomes. Rather than treating workers as interchangeable units of labor, Fouad believes employers sho...

In this episode of An Educated Guest , host Todd Zipper sits down with Justin Draeger , Senior Vice President of Affordability at the Strada Education Foundation and former President & CEO of NASFAA. Drawing on decades of experience at the center of federal financial aid policy, Justin offers a nuanced, insider perspective on the real drivers behind the $1.7 trillion national student debt burd...

How can higher education scale its reach without sacrificing academic rigor or student outcomes? In this episode of An Educated Guest , host Todd Zipper sits down with Dr. Vijay Kumar , Dean of Penn Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania , to discuss the changing landscape of engineering, robotics, and academic leadership. Drawing on nearly 40 years of experience as a researcher and adminis...

What happens when our modern schooling system reaches its logical conclusion—one optimized for a thin slice of intellectual testing that the computer in our pocket can now ace in seconds? In this episode of An Educated Guest , host Todd Zipper sits down with Abby Falik, the founder of Global Citizen Year and the creator of the flight school, an innovative global community without a physical campus...

What happens when an entrepreneur builds a business not out of a tech epiphany, but simply to survive? In this episode of An Educated Guest , host Todd Zipper sits down with Tal Frankfurt , Founder and CEO of Cloud for Good , to trace the company's remarkable evolution from a one-bedroom apartment to a premier Salesforce implementation partner spanning three continents. Tal shares his candid...

What happens when a high school student decides to skip his Harvard admission to launch a healthcare technology company? You get the four-decade entrepreneurial odyssey of Doug Becker , the founder and CEO of Cintana Education . In this episode of An Educated Guest , we sit down with Doug to deconstruct his legendary career building, running, and investing in some of the largest educational ecosys...

What if the future of American education didn’t involve multi-million dollar buildings, century-old factory models, or teaching to the "mythical center" of a 30-student classroom? In this episode of An Educated Guest , host Todd Zipper sits down with Don Soifer , co-founder and CEO of the National Microschooling Center , to pull back the curtain on the fastest-growing narrative in K-12 e...

What happens when the traditional promises of higher education, standardized testing, and steady middle-class milestones no longer align with reality? In this episode of An Educated Guest , host Todd Zipper sits down with acclaimed author and journalist Anya Kamenetz for a wide-ranging conversation on high-stakes tests, debt, generational justice, screen-time, and more. The conversation begins wit...

For decades, colleges and universities have treated the financial aid office as a dense, back-office administrative function—a labyrinth of tax-code-like regulations to be managed out of sight. But as higher education faces a stark demographic cliff and intense competition for shrinking student cohorts, this legacy mindset is proving fatal. In this episode of An Educated Guest , host Todd Zipper s...

When it comes to the path from education to financial security, the "golden ticket" narrative we grew up with is showing significant cracks. Today, students who work hard and play by the rules find themselves facing a steep experiential paradox: entry-level job listings frequently require multiple years of prior work history, yet securing a competitive, paid internship during college has...

What does the future of the American workforce look like when you bypass the traditional four-year college track entirely? In this episode of An Educated Guest , we sit down with Kermit Cook , the CEO of Penn Foster , to explore how a distance-learning model founded in 1890 to train coal miners has evolved into a hyper-modern platform educating hundreds of thousands of middle-skill workers. Kermit...

As the 2026 labor market faces an enrollment cliff and a massive influx of AI automation hollowing out traditional white-collar entry-level work, the "what is college for" debate has reached a fever pitch. Students are increasingly wary of high-debt, four-year degree conveyor belts that fail to guarantee day-one productivity. In this episode of An Educated Guest , we sit down with John C...

What happens when a tenured professor realizes that the very system she serves is "irreparably broken"? In this episode, Todd Zipper sits down with Dr. Maria Murray, the force behind The Reading League , to discuss the staggering reality of American literacy. Despite massive financial investment in our K-12 systems, only three out of ten students read at grade level—a statistic Murray ar...

Is the "Iron Triangle" of higher education—cost, quality, and access—officially under siege? In this episode of An Educated Guest, Todd Zipper sits down with Nick Dirks , President of the New York Academy of Sciences and former Chancellor of UC Berkeley, to discuss the existential challenges facing modern universities and the scientific community. The conversation explores the "Expe...

Is the $1.8 trillion student debt crisis a symptom of a broken "Iron Triangle" in higher education? In this episode of An Educated Guest , Todd Zipper sits down with Daniel Pianko , Co-Founder and Managing Director at Achieve Partners , to dissect why 50% of college graduates are currently underemployed and how the "Learn and Earn" model is disrupting the status quo. The conver...

The Forest is the Classroom: How Terris King II is Revolutionizing Early Education Can the future of education be found in the woods? In this episode of An Educated Guest , Todd Zipper sits down with Terris King II , founder of Temple X Schools, to explore how nature-based micro-schools are transforming urban education. Terris shares his journey from teaching at the world-renowned Shanghai America...

Is your degree program past its "sell-by date"? In this episode of An Educated Guest , Todd Zipper sits down with Norm Allgood , Dean and CEO of the Lyonova Institute at Saint Leo University, for a candid look at the "mechanical truths" of higher education. After years of building Synergis Education and advising over 75 institutions, Norm is sounding the alarm: higher education...

Getting into college is a massive achievement—but for first-generation students, graduating is often just the beginning of a new struggle. Why are so many talented graduates stuck in "underemployment" traps? In this episode, Todd Zipper sits down with Sheila Sarem, Co-Founder and CEO of Basta. Sheila shares her journey from the front lines of hiring at DC Public Schools and KIPP to launc...