What’s Next for 2U? CEO Kees Bol Talks Microcredentials, University Partnerships, and AI

Kees Bol is the CEO of 2U, a global leader in education technology that expands access to affordable, career-relevant learning in partnership with the world's top universities, institutions, and industry experts. As CEO, Bol oversees all aspects of 2U's business while driving its long-standing mission: to provide learners worldwide with life-changing higher education that unlocks potential, fosters social mobility, and enhances economic security. Before joining 2U, he was the CEO of Boundless Learning, a global online program management business. Earlier in his career, he held leadership roles as Chief Marketing Officer at Strategic Education and Senior Vice President of Marketing, Enrollment, and Retention for Pearson's K-12 virtual school division. Bol got his start at McKinsey & Company and honed his strategic expertise at Capital One. Originally aspiring to be a scientist, Bol earned a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Harvard University. Now that their three children are grown and have left the home, Bol and his wife are enjoying life as empty nesters in Washington, D.C.

💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:

1. Why 2U is doubling down on microcredentials and short-form learning.
2. How strategic acquisitions like edX and GetSmarter shape 2U’s long-term vision.
3. The evolving role of AI in both content delivery and internal operations at 2U.
4. How 2U positions itself as a growth and innovation partner for universities.
5. Why traditional degrees and microcredentials are no longer on separate tracks.

✨ Episode Highlights:

[00:04:52] The evolving role of 2U as a force multiplier for university partners
[00:08:57] How 2U helps universities stay agile in a rapidly changing education market
[00:10:42] Strategic insights on 2U’s major acquisitions – edX, Trilogy, and GetSmarter
[00:14:22] Why microcredentials are on the rise and how AI is accelerating the trend
[00:19:15] Three ways AI is impacting 2U: productivity, process, and product innovation
[00:22:42] A new kind of learning assistant: How AI is improving student engagement
[00:26:20] Advice for university leaders facing demographic and political uncertainty
[00:30:29] Kees Bol’s 5-year vision for 2U: growth, innovation, and high-impact education
[00:33:01] The blurring line between degrees and non-degree credentials in higher ed

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Transcript

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[00:00:00] Kees Bol: If you look at the acquisitions that were made, and especially the three big ones that you're talking about, I strongly believe that strategically they were all the right decisions. They added significant capabilities to the overall portfolio that to you could bring to bear, to any partnerships with a university.

[00:00:21] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry from funding rounds to impact ai. Developments across early childhood K 12 higher ed 

[00:00:33] Ben Kornell: and work. You'll find it all here at EdTech Insiders. Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter and offer our event calendar and to go deeper, check out EdTech Insiders Plus where you can get premium content access to our WhatsApp channel, early access to events and back channel insights from Alex and Ben.

Hope you enjoyed today's pause.

[00:01:01] Alex Sarlin: Case Bull is the CEO of two U. A global leader in education technology that expands access to affordable career relevant learning in partnership with the world's top university's institutions and industry experts. As CEO, boll oversees all aspects of two U'S business while driving its longstanding mission to provide learners worldwide with life-changing higher education that unlocks potential.

Fosters social mobility and enhances economic security. Before joining two U, he was the CEO of Boundless learning, a global online program management business. Earlier in his career, he held leadership roles as chief marketing officer at Strategic Education and Senior Vice President of marketing, enrollment and retention.

For Pearson's K to 12 virtual school division, Bo got his start at McKinsey and Company and honed his strategic expertise at Capital One. Originally aspiring to be a scientist. Bo earned a PhD in physical chemistry from Harvard University. Now that their three children are grown and have left the home, Bo and his wife are enjoying life as empty nesters in Washington DC Case Bowl.

Welcome to EdTech Insiders. Thank 

[00:02:13] Kees Bol: you very much. I'm very happy to be here. 

[00:02:15] Alex Sarlin: I am very happy to speak with you. To you is a legendary ed tech company and going through a major point in its history and I'm so curious to hear what your plans are. But before we get into you, tell us a little bit about your background.

You have a really interesting background. You have a PhD in physical chemistry from Harvard. You are at McKinsey, you're at Capital One. You've sort of had all sorts of experiences. Tell us a little bit about what your life has been like up to this point and how it's led to the analytical skills that you're planning on using to take to you to the next level.

[00:02:49] Kees Bol: Great. Yeah, and I'm very happy to do that. I get that question quite a bit actually because if you look at my career, it does look like I made some very sharp left and right turn years. But actually there is a through line here and it's mostly that I'm really interested in solving complex. And using a very analytical, even scientific way to approach those.

So I started doing that as being a scientist, getting my PhD in physical chemistry. Then went on to work for McKinsey and was a consultant to large corporations, again, using problem solving skills. Moved on to Capital One, where I was an analyst in various functions, and then ultimately landed in a job in education.

And then found out that education has the added benefit where you. Use analytics and problem solving to do so, but you're also at the same time changing people's lives. So the impact that you have is real, and you can see the impact that you have on people's careers, their lives, the impact on the people around them, and that's very gratifying.

So once I got to education, I knew I found my home, and now six weeks ago I found a slightly new home within education at 

[00:04:00] Alex Sarlin: tu. That makes sense. Yeah. We have no shortage of complex problems in every aspect of the education system, so I think that analytical approach is very valuable. So let's talk a little bit about Two U.

Listening to this podcast are definitely familiar with Two U, it's EdTech podcast, but just to zoom out, right, two U has been a leader in the online program management space for many years. It's been very visible. It's been sort of almost the poster child for the concept of online program management and taking universities.

Online creating online degree programs, credential programs, and sort of full service, and it still has a strong focus on partnering with top universities and other kinds of institutions. What do you see as the sort of next phase for the online program management space and for the partnerships the two U has spent all this time fostering that are really, really close?

This sort of private public partnership that you've been working with. 

[00:04:52] Kees Bol: I would start with saying that I strongly believe, or almost like at the point where I know that the demand for learning and the kind of learning that we help and we partner with universities, uh, to provide will continue to grow.

There's just a continued need for people to upskill, re-skill and advance in their careers. And if anything, that's accelerating on a global scale, so that means that the kind of services and products that we deliver will continue to be in high demand. I think there's definitely universities that can do many of these things themselves and they've built a significant skills and capabilities in that direction.

But typically we are able together to achieve more than we individually could. So our best partnerships are the ones where we're not thinking, being thought of as a replacement for things that the university does, but as a force multiplier that really one and one becomes three or even more. I should also say that partnerships are really at the core of what we do and at the core of our strategy and to you is in a great position that we have a fantastic portfolio of partners and we will continue to build on those partnerships, making sure that we deliver everything that we say we deliver in the best possible quality.

Look for opportunities to expand those partnerships, but also look for opportunities to add additional value into those partnerships so that the partnerships that we have thrive. And also perhaps adding new partnerships to our portfolio. 

[00:06:18] Alex Sarlin: Absolutely. And in terms of that concept of being a force multiplier, I think implicit in your comments there, which I think is really fair, is that when two U first entered the market, universities really had like zero capacity to go online, to take courses online, to build out programs, to build out marketing functions for their online offerings.

And then in the time since then. Some much more than others, but the university world has sort of increased its own skillset in that space as the world has gotten more and more online over the last 10, 15 years. When you talk about the force multiplier, it seems like you're sort of focusing on complimentary skills.

What can to you bring to the equation that is complimentary to you, university or institutional partnerships, that it's not about duplicative effort, it's how do the pieces fit together to be more than the sum of their parts? I'd love to hear a little bit of what that. Might look like. It doesn't have to be in great detail, but I know that TU works with UNC and Syracuse and a lot of different business schools all over the country and world.

Paint a little bit of a picture of what that force multiplying function might look like. 

[00:07:21] Kees Bol: Yeah, that's a great question. We think about this a lot because ultimately we need to make sure that what we deliver to university is beyond. What they can do themselves, right? If there is no real strong reason why they should partner with us, then they probably shouldn't.

But I think where the kind of things lay where we can add additional value, it's a lot about scope and skill. So we can deliver services and capabilities at a level of excellence and with a reach. That is hard to accomplish for individual universities. Hmm. As well as that, there's other areas of added values around innovation, driving innovation, making sure that we are at the cutting edge of what's possible with new technologies, new opportunities in education, and bring that to our partners as well as data and market insights.

Really being able to look around the corner and skating is rather than to making. Build the kind of programs and possibilities that we need to be successful. 

[00:08:21] Alex Sarlin: I love that last point about skating where the puck is going and sort of prognosticating a little bit about how the education and post-secondary market is evolving because it is evolving and it's been changing a lot and I think that universities, I.

All have different strategies, but many of them really would love and do love partnerships in trying to figure out how to position their offerings, how to get to new audiences, how to reach adult learners or various kinds of non-traditional learners that are outside of their geographies. So it feels like there is a lot of strategy involved with this type of function that I can imagine that that sort of future prediction is a big part of.

[00:08:57] Kees Bol: I would say even more. I mean the pace at which that is changing and the pace at which you need to as.

[00:09:11] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, and some of the topics that are changing, computer science has been one of the fastest growing majors for a very long time, and we may be starting to enter the beginning of the end of the dominance of computer science as the major that everybody wants to go into, just because of the way the technology is evolving.

I'm not sure if that's gonna happen or not, but I think that's an example of like just the very skills that people are looking for, continue healthcare.

Podcast. We've talked about two U over the last three years. All sorts of drama in the two U world. But basically to you, and full disclosure, I have been part of this in my career. I was at Trilogy Education or Trilogy Learning, which was purchased by two U, but to you has made a few really large acquisitions over the last few years, all to expand its portfolio and have different kind of offerings.

It was get smarter. Which was added short courses and sort of certificate courses, trilogy, which was bootcamps, and then finally edX, the famous and very, very large global. Some people call it MOOC platform, but certificate courses a huge course library. These acquisitions, there's lots of different takes on them, but they were expensive.

I think we all know, but they also provide this really wide range of different types of offerings for to you. I'd love to just hear your take stepping into this role. How do you see the future of some of these offerings? I know the bootcamp section is really being closed down in some ways, but I'd love to hear you talk about sort of this growth by acquisition strategy and where you see it going.

[00:10:42] Kees Bol: As you know, I've been in the education industry for a while, so for a while I've been able to look at two U from the outside in, right, and have very similar observations as you just described. Like lots of big acquisitions for a very high price, and then followed obviously by some challenges financially, which led to bankruptcy and now reemergence.

But if you look at the acquisitions that were made, and especially the three big ones, strongly believe. They were all the right decisions, they added significant capabilities to the overall portfolio that to you could bring to bear, to any partnerships with a university, financially, maybe not so much, but that's also a little bit like looking in the rear view mirror, right?

I mean, it's very easy to say that afterwards and kind of Monday morning quarterback and say, Hey, we should. Maybe not, but if we're talking about the strategic importance of those acquisitions, I can definitely talk about it. Please get Smarter, continues to be a very healthy business in the executive education, which is also a very fast growing business trilogy, the bootcamp.

Yes, you're right. We've made a decision to pivot there. That was mostly due to the fact that the market kind of shifted away from a need for bootcamps. Yeah. Where kind of the long form intensive training just became out of style and was no longer meeting the demands of the market. Yeah. So in that case, we are decided to pivot to shorter form micro credentials.

On the same topics. edX is still one of the main pillars in the two U strategy, and it provides kind of unrivaled access to millions of learners and data on millions of learners that we can leverage in our degree business, in our executive education business and beyond. So I very much believe that the acquisitions in themselves from a strategic perspective, really partner and we're still leveraging those capabilities.

[00:12:40] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, I think that's a fantastic answer. I happen to, just my personal perspective is I agree with everything you've said, and as somebody who was, again, inside Trilogy as it was growing and as it was acquired, all of these acquisitions make a lot of strategic sense, get smarter in the executive spaces, competitive with emeritus.

There's just a lot of. Tools in to use tool belt in terms of different length course offerings, different types of credentials, different ways to use data to have learners move between intensive nursing degrees and microcredentials that may be used to keep them, keep a working nurse up to date on all the technology.

There's a lot of there there, so I'm really excited to hear you say that. Yes, financially maybe very burdensome, but strategically I. It makes sense and I, I agree. I feel like they did too. Even though it's easy to Monday morning quarterback and look back and say 750 million for Trilogy, I think it was 800 million for edX.

The dead environment changed. It caused a lot of financial hardship. Strategically, there's a lot of upside. So I wanna ask you about ai, but before we get into that, let's talk a little bit about, you say edX and Microcredentials are sort of becoming core of the strategy. Bootcamps longer form transformational.

I'm gonna spend six months to a year. Changing my whole career trajectory and moving into a different type of industry, which is what a lot of the bootcamps are really about, is sort of out of fashion. I agree with that, and a lot of the bootcamp providers have had to deal with it and instead there's more of this ongoing micro-credential learning in the flow of work, various kinds of things.

I'd love to hear you talk about where you see that all going and how Microcredentials might be continuing to grow and, and take over more of the market. 

[00:14:22] Kees Bol: I very strongly believe that there's an undeniable shift to shorter form content on the learning side, but it in no way means that the degree business is going to go away.

Right? I mean, it's big. It's still there, and it'll be very important for a very long period of time. Totally. But there is a shift to. More frequent and shorter forms of content, and I'll put that a little bit in the context of, you just brought up ai, right? So I'm just reading something that in the next decade, a billion jobs are gonna be meaningfully impacted by ai.

That means that there's gonna be a billion people. That will be in the need of some re schooling, re-skilling to stay relevant in their job. That is enormous. And that is the kind of things where micro-credentials, shorter form certificates, all these kind of things will fill that particular need. So I strongly believe that that part of the overall space will grow very rapidly, where the degree of business will probably actually not shrink, still grow, but grow at a somewhat slower pace.

[00:15:25] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, there's also the opportunity for new degrees to come into existence at a faster pace than they have traditionally within just universities, where sometimes it takes quite a while to embrace new subjects like AI or all the sub subjects of AI that are gonna be coming. Robotics in AI or computer vision or AI is actually a pretty sprawling field, and as it becomes more accessible, it less sort of hardcore techy and more.

Hey, AI tools are everywhere. You need to know ai. If you're doing healthcare, you need to know ai. If you're doing law, it feels like there's a lot of opportunity for new subjects. 

[00:15:58] Kees Bol: That's true. And it's also interesting how fast some of those fields are changing. Right? So you think about kind of like the dichotomy between, let's say that you have certificates in artificial intelligence and you have in leadership, right?

Leadership has been kind of been the same for the last 10 years, right? It's changing and some people come up with new concepts, but generally speaking, what worked 10 years ago still works. Ai, what worked five weeks ago might no longer work. So the pace that we should need to continue to refresh, update, rethink what it is.

It's just tremendous, which creates a very different kind of set of requirements for how you manage those programs, how you go about that. And that's something that we need to work on and we have to help with, but universities have to adjust to that new world as well. 

[00:16:45] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. There was a concept out of Stanford a few years ago called the Open Loop University, and it was this concept of a degree program, but a degree program that.

Rather than being two to four years of concentrated time and then you're sort of out and you're an alumni with some relationship to your, your institution being like a less time upfront, but then continuous could be one year of intensive study. And then I. Continuing to loop back to the university as the field changes and as there are more offerings and it becomes something you could go to for a decade of your career and continue to get value from, I feel like to you is particularly well set up to create a future like that.

I'm curious if that kind of vision resonates with you, if it's something that you think may come in general or may come under to use auspices. 

[00:17:33] Kees Bol: I like that idea a lot. Right. So because I think generally it's true already where somebody might take, initially, at the beginning of their career, they'll do a master's like a couple of years, but five years later they probably have to come back and do some micro-credential or certificates and three years after that, again, three year.

So to offer all of that in a singular relationship that you build over a

coach at. It's very interesting. Definitely something that we have an interest in. Obviously I don't think it exists yet, and in terms of like really that is product or a service that's currently in market. But I do think there is a growing demand for it in terms of like what people are looking for. 

[00:18:14] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, and I think it puts platforms and providers like and online program managers like to you in a really interesting position because you offer multiple.

Offerings even sometimes from the same university. So it could be that you get your degree from X University through to U, and then you get access to a hundred microcredential courses from the same university and all the new ones that come out. There's a way to sort of piece the offerings together, even from existing offerings, which is really, I think, very exciting.

Yeah, no, totally agree. So let's talk about AI more generally. So every five weeks of things change. Couldn't agree more. It's so hard to keep on top of all the new models and all the new technologies, but we talk a lot on this podcast about how AI is just sweeping through. You mentioned a billion jobs.

It's really. Changing what people see as the future of technology, the future of work, and the future of education. I'm curious, you know, in your new role six weeks ago, I think you mentioned, what are sort of the top level thoughts about how AI might be part of two use future? I. 

[00:19:15] Kees Bol: I think AI is impacting generally higher education, and also with that also to use future in, in two main ways and I'll, I'll talk about them one after the other.

The first one is just the demand for AI education, right? You already said like maybe a, A year ago it was subject, I had a course in ai. Now it's AI in healthcare, ai. Proliferate and get more and more specific, and it's going to chase. Unlike a billion jobs that we just talked about, all these people need to get some AI education because in 10 years from now, if you don't know anything about this, you might have a hard time operating in the business that.

So, and that demand's already there, right? So it's like the most search for term on edX, for instance. The programs that exist in AI are growing very fast year over year. And I don't see that change. It's not a fa that's gonna go away in six months from now. This is gonna be to here to stay for at least a while.

So that's one way. The other way is how we are actually using and integrating AI in our business. And I typically think about that at three levels. Right? There is the wonders, the personal productivity that I think a lot of people are using, right? The different things that you have that come with your email and you can get a summary of an email chain or you can get a summary of a deck or that can hear a transcript of a meeting.

Those kind of things. Very useful and it's really focused on personal productivity. Get more done than be more effective in your job. Then there is. It's called a process productivity. How are you leveraging AI to deliver kind of the products that we have, but what I call behind the curtain so it's not exposed to the outside world, right?

So that can be using AI to generate content in learning or using AI to access information in a database. Very important. And the objective there mostly is around. And how you measure whether or not it's successful is around productivity, increases efficiency. The third part is where you are using AI at the front end of your business.

And there, I think it's all around not efficiency, but effectiveness. Are you effective driving the outcomes that you want to achieve? And we are testing in that space, I would say. I don't think anybody can claim that they know exactly what works, what doesn't, but you gotta be at the front end. Testing and finding your ways, ways, and we see some very interesting things.

I'll 0.1 out that I'm super excited about. So we have an AI learning assistant mm-hmm. That we're using in some of our courses. And generally speaking, it gets a lot of use and, uh, satisfaction by the students that use it is high, which is great. But the thing that I'm really excited about is that. The percentage of students that use the AI learning assistance is significantly higher than if the same students got the chance to use a real life learning assistance.

So it's taken away one of the barriers that people feel to reach out to a real person and ask a question, and that means if I have more students using that service. The effectiveness of the teaching increases the, the learning attainment increases and actually get better outcomes because of it. So it's a very interesting but exciting insight, but also gets to ai doesn't necessarily replace people, it just adds to what people can deliver themselves.

So. A little bit of a tidbit of something that we're testing out, but we're very exciting about the initial results. 

[00:22:42] Alex Sarlin: I love it, and it is actually, there's a legacy there because Georgia Tech courses on edX put a virtual assistant, an AI assistant into some of their earliest courses many years ago, far before generative ai, and saw similar things.

They saw lots of usage. They saw lots of people really valued that 24 7 access. I forgot the name of it, but there's a terrific paper out there about how they did this. So, yeah, edX has been out front in this idea of AI assisted online learning for many years. I think it was probably 20 15, 20 16 they did that.

So you have a whole legacy there, which is really exciting and that makes a lot of sense, and especially within the context of an online program management, a catalog. There's so much value in a learning assistant because it could help within a course, it could help between courses. It could help bring content from one course into another course or content from the past spiral back to say, Hey, to know what you're doing here, you gotta remember the class you took last semester where you were learning this.

Let's bring that up. I mean, the idea of AI being so deep into the system that it can actually see all the pieces and see the data and see how they connect, gives it power even beyond a human assistant. 

[00:23:46] Kees Bol: Yeah, there's some very exciting opportunities there that ultimately, we'll get to what you said in the beginning.

It's like, like really drive the effectiveness and very excited about what we're all doing, but especially about what we can do in the future. 

[00:23:57] Alex Sarlin: Absolutely. I like the breakdown that you said, a productivity process and then forward facing basically features that are meant to actually improve the efficacy of the learning experience, the backstage AI and front stage ai, and then AI as a topic that feels right on.

We've spoken to a number of different. Online learning companies over the last year, and they often talk about that split between teaching AI as a subject versus AI internally, how AI could fuel product features or recommendations or things like that. And I think it's really interesting because there's a way in which those two can come together, right?

If you have subject matter experts, especially when you're working with top universities like two U does creating. AI content for students that those same partners may have fantastic ideas or technologies or know-how that could feed into product features. I wonder if you envision a future where you may work with some of your university partners to move the platform forward and start to think about how AI might really take learning to the next level.

[00:24:56] Kees Bol: I think you're right on. It's often the same people, right? So it's the, the same people that are basically the teachers of it are also the ones that come up with the best ideas of how to leverage AI in our own systems, our own products, and also the ones that are very much interested to do that with the courses that they're providing.

So, yeah, no, totally agree. That's where a lot of the, the conversations are going, and I think we'll see some very interesting movements and advancements in that space. 

[00:25:21] Alex Sarlin: We've gone this far in the conversation without mentioning anything political or anything about the post-secondary landscape right now.

But we are, I don't wanna get into the politics of it, but we are in a very intense time for universities. We are seeing funding cuts, we are seeing political debates. We're seeing demographic changes that threaten the future of enrollment. They're gonna be literally fewer high school graduates, which threatens, you know, traditional undergraduate enrollment.

There's been an increase in questioning the return on investment. Of full degrees, especially in certain liberal arts subjects which have been decreasing for many years in popularity. There's just like a lot of change in the higher ed world. I, as somebody who is partnering and continuing to partner with many different universities, both in the US and abroad, I know you, you do some international universities as well.

How do you see the higher ed landscape right now and what would be top of mind for you if you were a university president or provost trying to make sense of this like very. Tricky time for our post-secondary. 

[00:26:20] Kees Bol: Well, first of, I'll say that I've never sat in that seat to be the university president, provost, and I'm sure there's a lot of complexities that I don't, uh, see.

But I can talk a little bit about kind of like yes, the fact that it is a very uncertain landscape at this point, right? There's a lot of things ongoing and it's unclear what kind of like the direction is. And that's both from, like you're saying, there's some markets changes that are happening. There's significant technology changes that are happening, and then there's all the, the government and regulatory changes that are out there as well.

It creates a situation that is highly uncertain, and I can tell going back to my McKinsey days, that there is a way to create strategy under uncertainty. It's difficult to do, but what it isn't, what isn't the right path is basically sit still and waiting for things to of material. That's not good. It's also not like betting on one big thing and hoping that that's the right one.

Sometimes works out and sometimes spectacularly fails, but what it is is to sew options for the future. So basically starting a lot of things, making change to the organization, starting new partnerships, starting new pilots, all those kind of things that will prepare you for possible outcomes of the future.

So you got basically in your head, you gotta go through the exercise of thinking what could happen and sort of describe what that is, and then work back and talk. What are the kind of things that we can do now to prepare ourselves for that? And one aspect of that as well is to think about, are you organizationally set up to react quickly?

Mm-hmm. Agility becomes very important under uncertainty as well. And that's also where partnerships can help. Like leveraging a partner that does have certain agility and certain freedoms to react quickly that you might lack yourself. So it's definitely a very complex, uh, problem and I, in no way I wanna claim that I have, I would have the answer, but I do know how I would start thinking about it and then try to get to the right kind of set of actions for each particular university, because I'm sure all their situations are different as well.

[00:28:23] Alex Sarlin: I admire that. I think that scenario planning approach under uncertainty makes a ton of sense. It strikes me when I hear you say agility is key and partnerships are key to agility. Having capabilities that are maybe distributed, but everybody can jump on and do something quickly in the face of a technological change or a demographic change.

It strikes me that to you and other ed tech companies that do partnerships. Could also serve as the agile partner because they tend to be far more agile than traditional universities, which have faculty committees. They have a lot of bureaucracy sort of built into them on purpose, but sometimes it makes them move a little bit slowly.

So I think that something that I love about the ed tech space in general is that it can potentially serve as a partner for traditional institutions. That helps them. Adapt quickly, more quickly than they may have been able to do otherwise, or try things to test out new approaches in a limited way with pilots.

Do you think that two U can play that role for universities somewhere where they can test or move quickly to adapt to all the changing situations? I. 

[00:29:22] Kees Bol: Yeah. No, absolutely. I, I, I think it's a very important function that we actually play for, for our partners. Yeah. One, like you're saying, sometimes within in universities, there's just the bureaucracy or, or decision making structure just is not set up for really fast decision making and action, and we can jump in there.

The other part is that. We often already have capabilities developed that we can apply immediately rather than having to build it up from scratch. So it is definitely an area where we can help tremendously and, and can basically help universities get to where they need to be in a much shorter timeframe than when they have to do it themselves.

[00:30:01] Alex Sarlin: So two U has been central to so many different meaningful milestones in education technology. It was really influential in the post-secondary education going online in the first place on executive education, going online on different module size and length of educational credentials. What do you want to be known for five or 10 years from now?

Where would you like two U to go next? And what do you want people to think when they see the two U logo? 

[00:30:29] Kees Bol: Yeah, that's a great question and the way I think about this, okay, let's say five years from now, right? If, what would success look like? And what that is, is that we will be the leading growth and innovation partner for the world's top universities and organization, helping them win by enabling the delivery of high impact.

If somebody asks somebody five years from nine and they say exactly that, then I know that we're successful. But how to do that? The great thing is that the core ingredients to make that a reality already exist at tu and those have been billed over a long period of time, partially through the acquisitions that we talked about before, and all the work that, uh, happened within the two Gene, uh, before that.

With the distraction of the last two years, we're kind of like, at this point, reemerging and recommitting to those capabilities and those products and those services that we know that are ultimately going to this mix of ingredients that get us to the, to the right end product. So focusing on innovation, focusing on market intelligence, focusing on.

Instance through our placement network where we have capability that we can bring to universities and help their students. These are all elements that already exist. We need to sort of recommit to them and bring them to our partners in the right way. If we do that, all right, then five years from now, we'll get to exactly where I want to be.

[00:31:59] Alex Sarlin: I love that, focusing on the core capabilities, being a really solid partner, understanding market dynamics, being innovative and moving at the speed of technology. It's a powerful brand and I think it's a, it's a really important role to play in the post-secondary ecosystem. I wanna speak just really broadly here.

You know, we always go at the end of our interviews to a couple of questions, but I wanna spend a little more time here with you than I usually do, because I think that as somebody who's. Brought a lot of different types of experience to this space and has work outside of education technology. I feel like you're gonna have a wide ranging view on this.

What is a trend that you see right now that you feel like is the next big thing? I'm curious, like is there a trend, is there a a movement that you're like, Hey, I've heard more and more people asking about this or talking about this, or the zeitgeist is changing in this way. It's always interesting to hear what people say, and I think it's useful for the EdTech industry to tap into this collective consciousness.

[00:33:01] Kees Bol: One of the trends that, and it's not a new trend, but I see it accelerating, is that the bright lines that existed between degree programs and anything that's not a degree, yeah. Is blurring faster and faster, and that is both in the ways consumers, learners think about learning. The way that employers ultimately are accepting of different forms of learning, but also now what I'm seeing in our partnerships, how universities are thinking about it and how they're thinking about, they want to be a partner with us, not just for a degree and not just for courses, but for the whole spectrum.

And think with us about, okay, how are we thinking about something like ai? All the way from micro-credential to certificate, short course to full degree. And how does that all string together? It's a somewhat new world where we have to think about those things, not in two different parts of a business or DI two different parts of a university, but as one thing that all fits together and I think that will further accelerate.

I think that is the future and that's, we'll all start thinking about it. 

[00:34:08] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, that's a great answer and I think it's really exciting to see that happen as somebody who has been excited about that change for a long time. Feels like it is continuously moving in that direction of not feeling as rigid barriers between things.

We've always had this credited degrees are this one particular type of education and then everything else, which is somewhat informal. They don't usually stack together. They don't usually connect. They can't usually build to degree or influences. That used to be sacrosanct and at this point they're starting to be these blurred products where you could take a course and then apply it to a degree or various things like that.

So to you has a lot of changes coming, A lot of really exciting announcements to make. I know you're gonna be at the A-S-U-G-S-V conference in San Diego and there will be certainly some news from to you. Where would. You point our EdTech obsessed audience if they want to really know what is to you doing next, what are the new partnerships that you just mentioned?

What are the new product features? What are you, how are you thinking about ai? Where should they go to find out more? 

[00:35:14] Kees Bol: Well, we will definitely continue to be vocal about the things that we're doing and making sure that we post about that on, on LinkedIn, go to conferences like a UG to talk about it. Do press releases to make sure that people hear about.

Go to our website and a lot of the same information will be available there as well. 

[00:35:32] Alex Sarlin: Terrific. I know people in the ed tech world are really, really curious about what two U does to, as you say, get back to the core mission of being a growth and innovation partner and bringing high impact education to scale.

I think I got most of that in the wake of, you know, some changes, but I think. Changes that could be really, really positive. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I feel like I've learned a lot about where two U is going and excited to see what happens next. This is Case Bowl, the new CEO of tou.

Great. It was a pleasure. Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more EdTech in. Subscribe to the Free EdTech Insiders Newsletter on.