switching gears here a little bit. Two major forces
in the online education industry are joining together to create
the next arab online learning Edtech company to you recently
announced the acquisition of X and online platform for higher
education founded by M. I. T. And
Harvard together, the companies say they will create one
of the world's most comprehensive online education platforms. Two
, you will act as a parent company with X
operating as its global platform and its primary brand for
its products and services here. Now with more details
about this new collaboration, is the co founder and
ceo of to you Chip Paszek Chip, thank you
so much for being here. Can you just tell
us more about to use acquisition of Fedex and how
it will transform of the business? Thanks, we're
so, so happy to be here with you.
So we do think it's an industry redefining combination as
we come together to you and X create what we
think is the world's most comprehensive free to degree,
online education platform and marketplace uh with a true worldwide
presence. So, Ed X has a global brand
With over 100 million visitors a year, 41 million
learners and X together with to you, we bring
our very large portfolio of online education offerings ranging from
high quality online degrees to technical bootcamps for re skilling
and up skilling to executive education for people to come
in and take a 6 to 8 weeks short course
on something like sustainability or Blockchain and being able to
offer those worldwide under the ethics brand is a huge
opportunity for, for all of us going forward when
you say free to degree, can you break down
what that is exactly? Because when I think of
Fedex, I kind of think of the non profit
and I think of free, but when I think
of to you, I think of a for profit
company and making money is this free tuition? What
is it exactly? So one of the reasons this
happened in the first place is there's very clear mission
alignment between ethics and to use. So when we
talk about why this happened in the first place,
it's really three words mission, mission and mission.
Our goal is to unlock human potential and whether we're
doing it as a nonprofit where addicts previously was or
a for profit company that's publicly traded like to you
, our goal is to allow learners access to high
quality options to help them transform themselves. And so
at X brings 3500 plus massive open online courses,
free courses where you can come in and learn and
we bring a variety of online degrees, technical bootcamps
to learn how to become a coder or sexy or
cybersecurity and a variety of online education executive education programs
and so somebody may want to come and take a
free course as a starter and then eventually roll into
something that helps them unlock a path for them,
whether it be an M. B. A.
Or a nursing program. You know, we're one
of the largest producers of nurses and speech therapists and
social workers. So it's a huge world wide opportunity
for people to really transform themselves. So we like
to think that we're eliminating the back row in higher
education. Is this the future? You know,
and I ask that in context of this year,
um kind of after and still gets amid this pandemic
. We're seeing lower enrollments in traditional universities um and
people may be potentially evaluating student loan debt in a
way they maybe wouldn't have it or had it in
the past and thinking about maybe going into trades or
these shorter term um uh courses. Are you are
you saying that this is kind of the future of
where education is going and you're kind of um you
know, well positioned for that? No question.
I mean the future is blended and connected in every
way possible. And you know, us coming together
with Fedex should allow us to really continue to drive
affordability for people to unlock their own potential in a
variety of different kinds of programs. I would say
if you look at the long term history of online
education, one of the problems for online education Is
it really hasn't delivered historically great outcomes. And one
of the things I'm most proud of in our 14
year history at to you as a track record of
quality, like if you look at retention rates and
graduation rates and things like board pass rates in the
programs that we've powered on behalf of many of the
world's best institutions. You're talking about high quality online
education. So, uh, you know, I
do think going forward, Covid created an urgent need
for people to go online. You know, we've
been online for a long time and I will tell
you when done right. It can create an incredibly
high quality experience with an outcome for someone that is
equal to or better than a campus outcome. And
now that you bring ethics to bear and you're talking
about a worldwide brand to you, you know,
this year we'll do, uh, roughly a billion
in revenue and, you know, we're not a
consumer brand and Fedex has a very large, worldwide
consumer presence built on really a 10 year history of
doing incredible work on behalf of similar schools to to
you. So you're talking about together we have 19
of the 20 top universities in the world. Before
I let you go, I only got about 30
seconds here. But you touched on something that I
want to dig into, just briefly, the secret
sauce to why your online platform works better than what
we've seen traditionally in the past, because I will
admit as someone who had the option to take online
courses in the past, I chose against it because
I didn't feel like it worked for me. But
you're saying you're obviously obviously seeing different results here.
What's kind of the secret there. You know,
I think you have to create an intentional path for
someone to experience something high quality that you can do
online and then blend it with the best of the
physical. So many of our programs, people do
do experience live sessions together. So one of the
reasons are metaphor is no back row is that that
experience of being together in a curated path of high
quality instruction built by high quality learning designers, whether
they be from medics or from to you. I
would tell you that if you're intentional about quality,
you can really do something great. And if you
look at our you look at look at the metrics
behind the company, like you're talking about in quite
an incredibly high quality programs that have the right kind
of outcomes for people. So you just have to
be intentional in driving something of quality and we think
together when you bring these two entities together, you
know, we're so proud to welcome the addicts employees
to to you today. This is a big moment
for the company. We also think it's a big
moment for the industry. This creates really, we
think the most comprehensive online education platform in the world
. Yeah. You know, in addition to being
intentional, I imagine as so much of us are
going into this hybrid work model, we're seeing the
acceleration of that hybrid work model that's kind of a
tailwind and an opportunity for growth with less hesitation.
Um, as to somebody who a few years ago
considered that and decided to opt against it, Thank
you so much for being here. Clearly, your
insight. This does seem to be an industry,
um, that has room to grow and congratulations on
this acquisition chip Paszek, co founder and Ceo of
to you.