Beyond Exams | Mastering Education with Mat Jacobson

Exams, rankings, research prestige… none of that matters when you graduate and still don’t know how to do the work. We take a hard look at why higher education keeps producing capable people who feel unprepared on day one, and why the system often rewards publishing papers more than building practical skills.

This week, our hosts, Magnus Olsen, Don Sanka Small and Will Tuffley are joined by Mat Jacobson, founder of Ducere Global Business School and the Kennedy University of Leadership, who has worked with presidents, prime ministers, Nobel Prize winners, and Fortune 500 leaders. Mat breaks down what universities were originally designed to do, why students think they’re buying one thing while institutions deliver another, and how applied learning changes the outcome. We talk MBAs, the real value of credentials as a market signal, and why medicine gets it right by integrating practice all the way through.

Then we get tactical: if you remove exams, what replaces them? Matt explains a project-based assessment model where each subject ties to the student’s actual workplace, turning assignments into real outputs instead of fictional case studies. We also look ahead at AI in education, including how leaders should think beyond cost-cutting, how to teach ethical use, and what risks sit around bias, integrity, and student IP.

If you want practical business education, work-integrated learning, or a clearer view of the future of higher education in Australia and beyond, this one will spark ideas. Subscribe, share it with a mate, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway or your toughest question about how universities should work.

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Transcript

Why Exams Still Rule

Mat 0:00

They will tell you that exams are the single worst way to teach information. How do you have a university without having exams? All universities have exams. And then I'm like, well, do you know why universities have exams? Like, no one knows why universities have exams. I've researched why universities have exams, but no one else knows why. Necessity is the mother of invention. So I think that really drives the entrepreneurial spirit, and I think that's really important. So we decided to partner with universities, but we would do everything a university did. Um, we wouldn't do some of the work, we would do everything. Sometimes people ask, well, universities are delivering degrees, so why would they want to work with you? But universities had enough common sense that when we went in and said, look, we want to do practical degrees where you're going to learn from presidents and prime ministers, and you're going to apply that learning to actual projects within a company, university was like, wow, that's actually really cool. That's great.

Meet The Education Disruptors

Magnus 1:15

Also Will Tufley, partner of BDO, leading the sports advisory division. He's also a director for Bonkia Australia, Aussie Athlete Fund and the Ash Barty Foundation. How are you, boys?

Will 1:27

Yeah, good. Good. Bocha Australia. Boccia Australia.

Magnus 1:31

Boccia Australia.

Don 1:32

Ash Barty Foundation. Um, what do you do there?

Will 1:35

Uh I'm just a director on the foundation, so Ash is driving sort of basically education to um yeah, to kids through um sport um and folks on the indigenous area as well.

Don 1:45

Amazing, good on you, mate. Good on you. Um, mate, thanks. But uh I think I I I don't believe that I'm the powerhouse on this panel today. So um thank thank how good's that? Uh it's it's it's it is refreshing. I have been out trumped very much so. And when you do the introduction to our guests, you'll understand exactly what I'm talking about. But um education's been a huge passion of mine, and and this is a subject that I wanted to address from the day we started this podcast, because um I think you know, uh as a human society, we've got to where we are through education, and that's my belief. And it's also the great equalizer. Um, but I think we're in a bit of a crossroads when it comes to education right now, um, because for many factors, whether it's cost or whether it's accessibility or whether it's the opportunity, um, it's a bit of a mess. It's a vocational training, um, especially in university. So I'd love to pick our guest's brain today and understand he's probably been one of the biggest uh disruptors uh to the education sector, especially to the sector that I think needs disruption, which is higher education. So uh Magnus, I'm gonna let you do the intro and then uh kick it off.

Magnus 2:58

All right, today we are honored to be joined by Mat Jacobson, founder of Ducere Global Business School and the Kennedy University of Leadership. He's the first Australian to build a university from the ground up in the US. He's a global leader who is disrupting traditional education. He's worked with presidents, prime ministers, noble prize winners, and Fortune 500 CEOs. And he's on a mission to make education more practical, acceptable, accessible, and truly life-changing, mate. Welcome to the podcast and thanks for joining us.

Mat 3:32

Thanks very much. Hope I try to live up to the introduction.

What Universities Are Really Built For

Magnus 3:35

So, like Don mentioned, is the traditional university model broken?

Mat 3:41

Well, I don't think the uh traditional university model has been working very well for a long time. So I don't think it's just a question of being broken at the moment, but I think there's really fundamental questions about what is a university there to do, who are they there to serve, and are they doing that job? So there's a whole lot of stuff we can unpick in that.

Don 4:01

I I also want to say too, most of um, especially when it comes to business education, the curriculum, the system, the frameworks were built to solve um problems of the past. Most universities follow that same framework. We are way past the industrial revolution, and we wonder why we have these skills gaps. We wonder why we've created Elizabeth Holmes, and we wonder why you know we're still not learning lessons from Enron.

Magnus 4:30

So, what I'd like to know is what is Ducere education, and how exactly are you guys disrupting the education industry?

Mat 4:37

Education in universities really started out as religious institutions. So they weren't really there for any practical, career, or vocational um uh needs in society. Um they then evolved from religious institutions to be um what we would see as quite narrow today and um not very diverse and equitable, which is for white male-only individuals to go to prestigious institutions, to effectively be uh worldly in-dinner conversations. Um, that's going back centuries. Um but universities today have quite fundamental problems around the core value of why a university is there and what students believe they're getting. So, unlike most things, if you use a phone or you drive a car and you've got a company that makes a phone or drives a car, you think, well, they're there kind of fundamentally to build a good phone or build a good car. And you think as a student, you're there at a university because the university is there to teach you skills that you might need. But actually, that's incorrect. Universities exist, and the people within universities are there to do research, they're there to publish in academic journals. That's the way they get incentivized, promoted, and it really has very, very little to do with teaching and career skills. So often we talk about rankings, people hear about rankings. You'll see billboards of a university where ranked X, where ranked Y as a badge of honor. And students think, wow, that must be a great course, has almost nothing to do with great courses and career-relevant skills, has to do with things like teacher-student ratios, how many um women or men uh professors they might have, how many articles are published, all things that don't really help you get a job. So if you start from the basics of what is the purpose of a university, and then who are you asking that question to? But in our case, we'd be asking that question to students. So, what is the purpose of a university for students? And one of the things, and we speak at panels and stuff all over the place. And one of the things that kind of frustrates me is universities in their ivory tower sometimes. You know, you've got uh vice chancellors and presidents, and they seem to think they can tell students what they want. Like, well, students are here because they want general education and they want a broad range of knowledge and underpinning knowledge. And I'm sitting there and I'll say things like, Have you ever actually spoken to your students? Because if you just go and stop any student on the campus and say, Why are you here? They'll say, I'm here studying engineering to get an engineering job, or I'm here studying accounting to get an accounting job. It's not rocket science. So, how do you design education? That's really the answer to your question and the purpose of what we're out there to do. We talk a lot about designing the most industry-relevant, career-applied university in the world. That's the vision.

Magnus 7:20

That's exciting.

Don 7:21

Matt, can I ask what made you get into university or into education and then to take on one of the biggest behemoths in any sort of, you know, corporate environment? Universities are well funded, you know, they don't want to change their model. So yeah, take us back to, you know, where did you Yeah.

Mat 7:42

So I think actually we work with universities all over the world. And I think um a lot of universities do want to adapt and change and do better. But the problem is the scale and the size and the bureaucracy, and there's just so many things that impede um universities' ability to be nimble. It's like trying to move an oil tanker as opposed to a startup. So that's certainly one of the one of the challenges. But what got me into it is like most people, I think if you invent something, you create something, it's usually some sort of personal issue, need, gap in a market. So I did a law degree and I studied pretty hard. It's not easy. You don't just turn up and they give them away, like, you know, handing out lollies. Like costs money, takes years, you're cramming for exams, you're staying up late doing an assignment, but you think you're doing all the right things. You know, you're doing what your parents, what your family, what all the adults tell you to do. And I graduated with honors. So I thought, you know, pretty sweet. Like I'm great and I'm ready to start working and um have a really professional career. And it was a huge shock to get into an office environment realizing that after years of work, you don't actually know how to do a single thing. Like you're completely useless. And that's bad at every level. Because it's bad for the student, because it's hard to get a job. And you also, if you get a job, don't know what you're doing. And it's also bad for the company because you're not really adding any value. Now, when I, going back decades, finished university.

Magnus 9:04

Um Do you mind if we if you tell us which university you studied at?

Mat 9:08

Well, I've studied quite a few things at a few universities, but the law degree I did at Bond University here in Queensland.

Magnus 9:14

Okay.

Mat 9:15

So local here. So I moved up from Melbourne and did that mainly because they were the only university that cared about if you completed your classes successfully and didn't compare about they didn't care about the time. And I finished a law degree and I think it was under 18 months. So I was pretty motivated to get it done pretty quickly. So just in terms of that general problem of lack of career skills within a university, um, we're a little bit more mature, all of us, some more mature than others in terms of age. Um, not maturity necessarily, just in terms of age. Um but uh when I was finishing school, there were a lot of programs that corporations had to really take you through an organization, all the different departments, and put you through training programs because they knew that coming out of university doesn't really provide you with useful skills. But now, fast forward to today, no one has patience for anything anymore. Everyone wants instant gratification. If you order something, you don't want it to take two weeks. You want it delivered today by Amazon. If you want to watch something on Netflix, you're expecting that the entire series is available tonight and you can binge watch for the next 12 hours. You don't want to wait a week for the next episode. Everything's instant gratification. And that's for everyone, including companies. So companies don't have the patience anymore to bring in a graduate with some two-year plan and structure to get them to a point where they're adding value. No one's got time for that. So students are even more disadvantaged now in trying to get graduate positions.

The Graduate Skills Gap Problem

Magnus 10:51

Will, I'd like to hear from you. You studied accounting. What was your take after you finished your accounting degree? Did you jump straight into a super high-paying job at 200 grand a year, or what was a transition like?

Will 11:03

Oh, yeah.

Magnus 11:04

Do you agree with what Matt's saying?

Will 11:06

Yeah, no, I I definitely, I definitely agree. There's definitely some subjects that were relevant to a point, but that you you pretty much learn on the job, right? And I've I've, I mean, even from a when I talk to athletes when we talk about our sports stuff, we talk about you're almost better off getting in industry and doing as much of that as possible, learning all that sort of stuff before actually and then smashing the degree out the end because the amount of you know workings and understandings you get from there is almost more beneficial, which is basically what you're sort of saying from uh actually understanding the industry and getting in the job. We can, as I say, we can always teach someone how to do an Excel spreadsheet and do a tax return.

Mat 11:42

Yeah. And then you get into questions like, so that's a really good point. And it, if you take it to the furthest extreme, we have a lot of conversations with big foundations and they say, well, why do we even need degrees? Why can't we just teach someone a six-month skill that's relevant to a job and they can just get a job? And my answer to that, it doesn't really matter what the head of one of the biggest foundations in the world says, or even what I say. It matters how the industry recruits for employment. And if you look at any government research, Australian Bureau of Statistics, um, you look in the US at the US Bureau of Labor, the majority of jobs in the US, it's 70%, require a college degree just to apply. So you're at a significant disadvantage if you don't have a degree. And then if you look at the earnings and average earnings of people with high school, bachelor's, or master's, um, it's significantly different at each level up the education ladder. So even though you might technically be able to do something quicker and shorter, if it kind of alienates you from the job market and especially from higher paid jobs, that's going to be a significant problem.

Don 12:44

Matt, it makes obvious sense to do a degree in medicine to become a doctor or a teaching to become a teacher, even an accountant, you learn the framework. But a business degree. A lot of people still, you know, they keep asking the question is there a relevance in doing a business degree? And is there relevance for master's MBA programs in the current market?

Mat 13:05

So that's a very good question. There's two interesting things about that. Firstly, you mentioned medicine, which I like, because um a lot of people are critical about education. This isn't a new topic. People saying, you know, education is too academic, too textbook. You've got professors in a university that have never really worked in a real job and they're teaching you, and what are you really learning that's practical? And I was giving a presentation at Harvard University and I said there's actually one area where universities are fantastic, really, really good at preparing students. And you know where that is? It's medical degrees. And then I asked the question, which is not really very clear, but I asked the question, well, why is that? Why is it that medical degrees they teach you really well? So when you're doing a medical degree, you don't go and sit at a campus for a few years and go, great, here's your piece of paper, Don. Goes, you can you're now qualified to go do surgery on people. You're doing practical whole time. Um you're doing practicals the whole time. You're integrated with hospitals and university back and forth the whole time. And my answer, I'm making this up, I don't know, but my kind of intuitive guess is what's the risk of failure? The risk of failure in medicine is someone's gonna die. So that's a pretty high risk of failure. So you've got to make sure that doctors are trained properly and know what the hell they're doing. For anything else, it's like, oh, you know, you'll just learn that on the job. Don't, don't really worry about it. Um, so there are examples where it's there's no other choice. You have to teach people properly. It can be done. Why isn't that model done in every single field? It doesn't make sense that that wouldn't be the same for an accountant, for a graphic designer, for anything. Work between industry and academia your entire way through, not one capstone project somewhere in your degree. But then the next question you asked is, is a business degree relevant and is a master's relevant? So that's something that's very valid to ask, gets asked a lot. We're in the world of education, so we see and breathe it all day, every day. So we probably think it's more common than it is. But in Australia, it's less than 5% of the population that has a master's qualification. So it's not a huge percentage of the population that have any postgraduate level qualification, let alone an MBA. So we are talking to people all day about it, so we think it's pretty prevalent, but actually it's not. And in any market, doesn't matter if you're a cafe or a restaurant or anything, you're in a competitive world. So how do you make yourself as competitive as possible? And an MBA has a few reasons why that's a good thing to do. Obviously, if you're learning things, which we can talk about if we want and how we actually design practical relevant education, if you're learning good skills to help you do a job better, well, that's obviously a bonus. But one of the things that universities talk about, even if your education's rubbish, one of the things that universities talk about when they're criticized for not having career-relevant skills is well, we're not really here. We're not a vocational institution, we're not about teaching career skills. It's what they call a signal to the market. It's a signal to the market that you've got some level of discipline and some level of education. So, aside from the professional development, that signal is important because it can help you get a job. It's always been relevant to getting a job and getting a promotion and getting a pay rise. But today, I would argue that that's even more important than historically. Because when you're in a real-world physical environment, you know, there's a lot of opportunities to demonstrate your worth and your value. We live in much more of a remote world now. So if you're remote, how are you giving these signals that you're smart, you're bright, you're capable? So having a reputable MBA qualification is a good signal. So that's for remote working where you never even see people in the flesh. And second to that is we live in a more globalized world. People are doing consulting, contracting, freelancing all over the world. How does someone have a clue if someone they're dealing with on the other side of the world knows what the hell they're talking about, is professional, is competent? So again, one of the ways to do that is to have a degree. Now, you can go to any university and get a degree, but then the questions are around well, what is the true value in terms of skills and what you're learning? That's a different conversation. But having an MBA is on average going to help you in many ways in terms of your ability to get a job, your ability to get a promotion, and your ability to get a pay rise.

Don 17:18

But in a business context, it creates a standard level of competency as well, right? You know that someone who's coming in has at least had a a base level where you can start from. And interestingly, what you talked about saying, you know, if you don't do your job right, if you don't teach medicine properly, you kill people. Well, so does business leaders. Mental health is one of the biggest killers on the planet, and people are affected every day by bad leaders, bad decisions. Enron I used before, Elizabeth Holmes. If you look at how many people would have, you know, died or or you know uh has suffered from the bad decisions that were made by those bad leaders, or business degrees.

Magnus 18:00

I would argue that would be more around leadership rather than than than the business.

Don 18:04

But but business acumen is part of leadership, right? So my when I did my MBA, I studied leadership in practice and I got to understand what a bad leader and a good leader looks like, and then what the framework should be for a good leadership team and how to do it. So that sort of that was an eye-opener. I've been doing that, I've been uh leading teams and running teams for a long time, but it that opened my eyes.

Mat 18:27

Yeah, I think that's um an interesting perspective, and definitely, you know, mental health um is becoming more of a prev prevalent issue. Um, and there's some extreme examples that you're giving, but that's kind of incidental. If you're doing surgery on someone, you have a very direct chance of you know something going wrong, and that could be quite catastrophic. If you're a graphic designer and you don't really have a lot of competence in what you're doing, no one's gonna die. You're just not very good at your job. Um, but there's ways to teach people to be much more effective and much better at your job. You could be a really great designer and have terrible communication skills. So, how are you communicating the vision of what you're trying to create and why they should engage you? The ability to communicate is just as important as the actual technical Adobe skills.

Magnus 19:10

And I think I love the example around the medical where you're doing that the educational piece than you're doing the practical piece. I'm the only one in the room, I get a year 10 education. Yeah, I was gonna ask you, yeah. Went swung a hammer and became a carpenter and then a builder and and and a few other things.

Don 19:24

But you learn how to submit really well, mate. You build a whole resort by by yourself.

Magnus 19:28

So But I think I think some of these academic skills could have set me in um in better footing. But I was just intrigued. So you've you've got the idea, you said you went to law, you saw a bit of a gap in the market. And then what happened? How do you actually go about building a university business?

From Law Graduate To Builder

Magnus 19:46

And then secondly, how did you go about scaling that?

Mat 19:48

So I have always been entrepreneurial. I've started businesses since I was in grade one at school, and it's kind of interesting how you know culture changes because now entrepreneurship is a buzzword and everyone likes it. And how do we develop and foster entrepreneurship and we want to see kids doing entrepreneurship programs and whatever? My parents were got called into school by the principal saying, you know, it's not okay for a kid to run a business out of a school, and if he does it again, he's gonna be like sent home. What did you do? I want to know what business you were running.

Magnus 20:17

What did you do? What were you doing in grade one?

Mat 20:19

Well, the first thing I did, so um, I don't know if uh you have this here in Queensland, but do you have oval teens? You know what oval teens are? I remember ages ago long time ago when I was in grade one. Little chocolate button-y thing. Yeah, yeah.

Don 20:32

It looks like my showing our region. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right.

Mat 20:36

So anyway, they were like the pretty cool things to be able to buy from a tuck shop, but they were a bit more expensive. So I would buy a packet of chips, potato chips, and uh they they were cheaper. And then I would sell chips individually to make more money, and then be able to afford to get Ovaltine. So I was basically buying and selling food from the tuck shop, but at like pieces of what was the uh you're wholesaling the chips. Wholesaling, wholesaling the chips. And then I would be selling other things like you know, stickers and things that were like fashionable and cool for kids at the time. And so I was always trying to, you know, hustle and make money. And I was always interested in ideas and businesses and doing everything from you know, washing cars to whatever. So I was always um self-employed. You know, I never had a job at the local supermarket or something. I was always doing my own thing. Um, and I was lucky. I was actually quite fortunate to be surrounded by entrepreneurs. And um, I kind of chose, you know, to run my own business. But my upbringing, everyone in my family was an immigrant. So none of them had a university education. A lot of times varied. So on my mum's side of the family, they're all either Moroccan um or Israeli. And my dad's side of the family was European, mainly Eastern European. And so, you know, when you're coming to a country in 1900, you don't have an education, you don't have great English. going to give you a job. What you do is you create a job. So everyone in my family, every uncle, grandparent, father, they all had their own jobs that they made. So that's what I just assumed you did. I didn't really have anyone around that was a role model that was a teacher or a nurse.

Don 22:16

I've I've never heard anyone actually put him in there.

Magnus 22:19

So many successful immigrants. I come from an immigrant background as well. 1974 we came over here from Sweden, couldn't speak a word of English and yep, dad ended up in the construction industry and I followed in his footsteps. So and I've been exactly like yourself and never really had a real job. Always just worked for myself. So continue. That's an exciting story.

Mat 22:38

Yeah. So necessity is the mother of invention. So I think that really drives the entrepreneurial spirit and I think that's really important. And I think people sometimes say things like entrepreneurs are born and not made which is completely untrue. So people who just have no other choice but to create their own job is something that's proven to be very successful. So you actually can teach people how to be an entrepreneur and especially if you have a have a driving need. So that was anyway a bit of the background of my entrepreneurial you know spirit. So I wanted to work in startups and technology. So I decided I didn't want to be in law. Like I never really planned to be a lawyer. I just thought it's a good degree to have because I didn't know what else to do honestly. Like you know you're a kid out of high school how do you know what to do? I thought sounds professional. So I'll do that good to have as a background. But the connection was a very weird kind of connection.

The Michael Jackson Detour Into EdTech

Mat 23:30

So I was doing some consulting because I also didn't know what startup to do. I was interested in different technologies. So I started consulting to different startups and I got some funding from state government, banks, IBM, what was called compact computing at the time and we call I don't know if they still call it this now it was called a technology incubator and we worked with some startups. So anyway some uh one came to me and they had an education uh technology to a platform to deliver education and they raised a million dollars so this is like 30 years ago a million dollars was a decent amount in Melbourne to raise raised a million dollars and he came to me this guy is a smart guy and he said we've basically spent the million dollars we've never generated a dollar of revenue we're about to run out of money and what do we do and I'm like well okay what do you guys do? And they had um a really beautiful designed education system because it's hard to imagine now but at that time you couldn't even have a photo on the internet. You had dial-up modems you had very very low bandwidth and if you had a photo it would like load you know line by line and it would take a minute. So what are you going to do? You're going to have an education program which is literally just black text. It's pretty boring. So they created an animated learning platform movement like a cartoon but it was very cool design like for adult learning it wasn't didn't look kiddy it just looked really sophisticated. But it was all cultural learning it was things like what sort of food people eat in Bulgaria and what sort of shoes people might wear in India and like interesting cultural content and it was really beautifully done. And I looked at it in five minutes I said you'll never make a dollar out of this I said because it's really nice and interesting but this sort of content on the internet people just have a perception that should be freely available. No one's going to pay a subscription to access that sort of content. And bizarrely I had a connection to Michael Jackson and so I contacted Michael Jackson's office and I said we've got a partnership if you're going to drop a name that's um hold on how do you bizarrely have a connection to Michael Jackson so someone that was his like um senior advisor in business I knew I still know and he worked closely with Michael Jackson so I said um to this guy in Los Angeles I said hey I've got an opportunity for you Michael Jackson's got the Heal the World Foundation. I said we'll give him all of our we just spent a million dollars building all this great content on cultures and you know learning about diversity and learning about different people and I said we'll give it to you for free. It's good publicity because we work with Michael Jackson. I'll give it to you for free. I said so we're going to give that away but what I liked about the technology is I could see from a compliance perspective because of the law background that you could use this to teach compliance that nobody wanted to do you know equal opportunity training privacy training companies don't want to do that. They do it because they have to so if you can do it in an engaging cheaper more efficient way. So that's what we did to finish the story on Michael Jackson was quite interesting because we um we organized a big launch event at Oxford University and we had media and newspapers because it's a pretty big deal to have Michael Jackson talking especially in an education forum it wasn't an easy person to to work with and so he agreed to all of this and this was all great and then like 10 minutes before he's got no I'm not doing the presentation. What do you mean? And he's like no not doing the presentation had a bit of a tantrum and so I'm going to do the presentation but I don't want any media no media okay fine. So he did the presentation but didn't really help us much with the statement so you went into this to get all the media and and it didn't work out. Okay. But anyway the upshot from the education perspective is we had a really sophisticated cool engaging online learning environment for compliance training.

Magnus 27:25

So we work with all the big companies because you essentially got in and used their platform that they created.

Mat 27:32

Correct. We transitioned it to a compliance training program. And then as I started getting into education because I wasn't in education at all, companies would be asking if we did formal qualifications because there's funding and um promotions and career development through formal qualifications. No one really cared about the equal opportunity. They just wanted to tick the box yeah okay fine whatever we've ticked that box move on. But what they really wanted was higher level education. How does this actually

Partnering With Universities Without Exams

Mat 28:08

work? But to become a university in Australia is not impossible but very very difficult and extremely rare and extremely regulated. There's almost no private university industry in Australia at all. It's absolutely tiny so it's driven by public sector. So we decided to partner with universities but we would do everything a university did. We wouldn't do some of the work we would do everything. We designed all of the curriculum all of the assessments we hired all of the teachers we did all of the marketing all of the enrollments and we had the university basically certify what we were doing. And that was an innovative model and sometimes people ask well universities are delivering degrees so why would they want to work with you? But universities had enough common sense that when we went in and said look we want to do practical degrees where you're going to learn from presidents and prime ministers and you're going to apply that learning to actual projects within a company university was like wow that's actually really cool. That's great. So you know in uh a really positive um uh you know feedback from the universities they weren't sort of like oh no we would never do that some would say that I can give you some examples of that that are a bit strange but anyway um mostly universities would say this is fantastic that's a great idea that makes a lot of sense there would be a market for that so they didn't see us as a competitor they saw us as a partner that could open up new markets.

Will 29:36

Yeah yeah oh well well you do a lot of work with athletes in education do you see this sort of system that's hybrid as such being online versus at a university and it's 100% online Matt right that's that's one of the biggest differences creates breech down the back yeah massively I think as a I think you know talking about the specific education actually going into getting a degree those sort of things I think that micro credentialing like value add sort of learning while you're doing your your career is really important and then that's get into industry or like do the degree if we need a bigger degree on the outside but more that's the apprenticeship model. Yeah effectively and I think the learning like you talked about the medical stuff I think what's really good about the Prax stuff is that's where you get that growth mindset where you learn what goes wrong well now we'll learn. Whereas in universities you sort of just do the exam and you don't actually appreciate what you necessarily get wrong. Whereas when you're in the practical world you see something go and hopefully it's not a death but you see something go wrong Rotto now I'm now I'm learning. And I think that's probably maybe something that medical's gone almost too far as it's like we don't want to do anything wrong. And it's like well then you may not learn as much.

Mat 30:43

Yeah you've got sometimes overcompensation but the apprenticeship model I really like that analogy because I don't think um you know a doctor would appreciate being put in the same category as a plumber or a or a carpenter. But in fact a medical degree is very much built as an apprenticeship style degree and it is just a much better way to learn anything. Doesn't matter whether it's carpentry or dentistry or or anything or computer science or or business.

Don 31:11

And and I've got to add a bit of a disclaimer so I am um I I have invested in DeSur and I do work for DeSur as well as you know I'm sponsored as a master's athlete by DeSur so that's a lot. But the way I met Matt had nothing to do with any of that. I was actually looking at doing an MBA and and you know there was ads coming up with all of this stuff. And I thought okay well I'm gonna reach out to the guy who's you know claimed to have started this thing and that's how we started our first conversation on LinkedIn I reached out to Matt and said this thing sounds too good to be true. Is it true? And yeah it was mind-boggling to me. I didn't realize there anything like that existed. I fell in love with the system. I fell in love with what Matt does there's a whole lot of stuff that we haven't even touched on his his philanthropy behind what he does is even bigger than the disruption model he's built.

Mat 32:04

But the comment you made about you know being too good to be true, that's a legitimate issue that we have because I mentioned I think before that we don't do exams. And most people think well is that a real university how do you have a university without having exams all universities have exams. And then I'm like well do you know why universities have exams? Like no one knows why universities have exams. I've researched why universities have exams but no one else knows why um do you know why universities have exams? Tell me so um the reason that they have exams is that from the British education system going back centuries, which was a very tutorial based education system, when you mentioned the Industrial Revolution, when the industrial revolution happened the monarchy wanted to triple the number of students that could go to universities in the UK 300% increase. That's a big increase like without any time period to prepare for it. So they basically created an industrialized model where you just put everyone in a room and give them a standard test it had never been done before. And the only reason and justification for doing it was just the massification of education. If you look at research from Harvard, any reputable university, they will tell you that exams are the single worst way to teach information. It's the worst way to teach information it's the worst way to remember information. So no one actually looks at the background and the reasoning but everyone is a victim is one of the worst things I think for any type of innovation and disruption is inertia. People don't question the why. They're of course you do exams because everyone does exams my dad did exams my grandfather did exams if they went to university everyone at university does exams how can you have a university without it but people in every context should always stop and question but why are we doing that way? And maybe there was a good reason at a certain point in time but does that reason still hold valid today?

Magnus 33:58

A few wise people that I know one guy in particular put it really well just because you've been doing something your whole life doesn't mean that it's right.

Learning From Presidents And CEOs

Magnus 34:06

Absolutely but you name drop so Michael Jackson you've worked with prime ministers you've worked with presidents what are some of the lessons and that you've learnt from some of those people that you've worked with oh I mean could talk for hours.

Mat 34:17

We have thousands of hours of footage interviewing everyone from the founder of Atari to an African billionaire to the commander of the International Space Station. So you know where do we start? We've uh Matt can you explain how that fits into the the Yeah so that's a good question. So what again one of the challenges of traditional universities you're learning from academics that have spent their whole life in academia and a lot of their focus is diverted from teaching to publishing articles and doing their own research and that sort of thing. So as a university we have to have trained academics who have got all the qualifications and have got the right credentials to teach. And that's often where a university will stop. But from our point of view you need to learn from the best people in the world you want to learn business you want to learn negotiations. The people that teach it the um case studies we've done on negotiation if I just look at that as a topic we have Lindsay Fox who also I think went to year 10 in school and uh built you know from his first truck to a billion dollar um organization. We have Kay, an amazing um woman entrepreneur based in New York who started USA networks built a $5 billion cable network company um she negotiated with all of the uh sports leagues that's how USA networks got founded so the NFL the NHL the NBA all of them she's like five foot one incredibly dynamic tiny little pocket rocket um and so she built USA networks and then um the former uh president of Botswana who I was in Botswana and and doing the case studies with him who after being a very well respected president from the African continent who led the five year intercon intercongolese peace negotiation process which is a very complex negotiation process so you're learning from people from oh and the head of the CIA as well so you're learning from incredibly diverse people and they don't all agree. They don't all in fact sometimes they'll say oh the textbook will tell you do this but that's rubbish and this is what really happens in the real world. So you're getting the academic and the practical knowledge there's no right answer is the person who was the former head of the CIA right or is the founder of USA Network there's no right or wrong. People have different styles people have different perceptions but as a student you're learning from these incredible people with their actual stories and lessons and then you take from that what's going to resonate with you.

Don 36:47

We are going to run out of time today as well there's so much to dig into like we haven't even uh touched the fact that Matt he doesn't live in Australia he lives in Los Angeles and he moved to LA to start his own university in the US too much compliance in Australia so you head abroad. So I think Matt, if you don't mind like we might have to dial you in for another session would you be open to doing that because I think we're gonna have to have a second but before we before we wrap up I want to touch on two things. One is you said no exams then I know the answer to this because I've just done mine and I'm I'm actually heading to London in a few weeks to graduate in London Cap and I'll just be there but I I want to know if you don't have exams then what?

Mat 37:32

Yes so you have of course assignments in university so that's not anything new but usually assignments are going to be just theoretical case studies that you just have to write a paper on. So you're working with us as a chief revenue officer for a global university group. If you went to any other university you'd be doing a case study on some Norwegian oil company and it's like you're spending your weekend studying oil companies in like Norway and it's like it doesn't really have much to do with my job. So it's the same process of assignments but every assignment is working on applied project for the company that the student's working in. So it's very practical and very relevant. And it's actually not entirely we can't say we invented that concept universities a lot of universities have an idea called the capstone project and that's where you work on a real life project with a real company the thing that's kind of just strange is that if you stop any student who did say a three year accounting degree and said what was the best thing in your university without doubt they're going to say oh we worked on this capstone project and I was doing this project with Coca-Cola and I loved it. It was amazing it was really exciting. And it's like but why is that one assignment in one class in your entire degree?

Don 38:42

So our entire degrees are built around that structure every class every assignment to give you a bit of insight this podcast was a brainchild of my MBA I actually wrote this how to do this how to start this and then I came and pitched it to you Magnus if you remember I said I said to you I wrote this thing as part of my MBA what do you think? Can we

AI In Education Opportunity And Risk

Don 39:03

do this?

Mat 39:03

And that's how this journey started but the last thing I want to touch before you get into your quickfire questions is the future what's coming because there's a lot of uncertainty there there's a lot of change where does AI fit into the the university spectrum well that is definitely an entire podcast which we can uh do at any time that you like but a couple of comments um around AI AI is you know really being used in every way that we can imagine for a university it has a lot of complexity because students are using AI and you and you know at conferences people talk about examples like well you can't say don't use a scientific calculator in a university it's a tool it's there. You have to teach people how to use a scientific calculator not say that's cheating if you use that. So from AI you can't bury your head in the sand and try to pretend it's not there. Students are going to use it. But how do you use it in a meaningful way and ensure students are actually learning because you don't want to just you know put in a prompt, writes a whole paper and then you haven't done anything well that's really cheating. So how do students use AI and how do universities monitor that? Then you have an issue on universities that if they do any type of review through AI, then no one really knows where it's going, how it can go out into the universe. The student owns IP universities can be liable if they're seen to be giving away IP of the student. So they're very reluctant to use IP, anything that can compromise potential IP then universities like every organization is thinking how do we use AI? Because if you've got a chatbot on your learning system that can answer 70, 80% of the questions that a student might ask, that's amazing because a student might be busy working and at nine o'clock at night they're sitting there studying and then they've got a question. Well they don't want to wait a day or two until an academic can respond. You can get an instant answer and keep moving. So there's a million different ways that this is a potential challenge. We have MBAs in AI and the thing for us in AI is that a lot of people think about I mean you've got a podcast here great amazing people will be thinking okay how can we use AI to increase our engagement increase our audience target potential consumers whatever. So you think about the positives right that's great. But just as important is thinking about the risks and thinking about these the ethics there's lots of examples I could talk about around problems of use of AI. So you don't want to just rush in like any old SWOT analysis that we used to talk about in the old days you want to look at okay we've got this opportunity to use AI what are the opportunities with it what are some of the benefits it's going to create how much money can it save but is it going to potentially have bias is it going to potentially discriminate against certain groups of the population you need to have a holistic view not just look at how much money can we save.

Don 41:49

But AI in its core like the numbers are astounding. $15.7 trillion dollars is going to be added into the global economy over the next five years. That's that's actually not a big number I know but I keep saying it's it's it's unfathomable.

Mat 42:04

It's actually an economic shift that's how big of a number that is it is a it's obviously a huge impact um on a on a range of areas but from a human level the concern is around jobs and job displacement and I've been at conferences with World Economic Forum and parts of World Economic Forum that have been that were held here every year in Heyman Island. They stopped it a few years ago in Heyman Island but um I'm talking about like 25 years ago and people at the time every technology comes out oh it's gonna take away all the jobs and ATMs no one's gonna work at a bank anymore all the bank staff are there's never been more employees in a bank ever in history. So um history tells us from the Luddites that people fear technology but actually technology creates more opportunities and more jobs. So I'm very um optimistic and very bullish about AI and what it can create. But I think at an individual level what people need to do is not fear and try to resist AI but be open to it and look at using it and start experimenting with it because the more knowledgeable you are and the more engaged you are because it's only going to get more and more prevalent and more and more sophisticated. So you don't want to be three generations behind you want to get onto it now and try to stay but the skills gap gap is huge.

Don 43:15

I've never seen any other every other technological advancement that's come, the leaders have embraced it and pushed it. We're finding now yeah in five years 15.7 trillion added but it the data that came out is showing something like only 15% or 25% of leaders are capable.

Mat 43:35

Well yes because it's still very new but I think there's a very very strong acceptance of the need to see how organizations are going to use AI, where they're gonna use AI. So right now because we speak to companies all day every day in every country in the world almost we've got staff in five continents and the every single organization is talking about we're thinking about the use of AI, where we can use it how We can use it. Even within an industry, there's really fascinating examples of the differences of the way different big players in the same industry are thinking about AI, but it's less about implementation. Of course, there's lots of applications right now, but overarchingly, it's less about implementation today. And it's more at the level of we're thinking about do we want to cut jobs because we can replace people? Do we want to make people more productive? That's a very superficial way of looking at AI, which is what most people are doing. The people who are really smart in the thinking of AI are actually thinking, how can we use this to create an opportunity we never would have been able to do before? That's really exciting, not just a cost saving.

Don 44:42

As a university group or a university, because you do own a university as well now, how are you addressing this and any new uh new technologies or fields of growth that are coming?

Mat 44:55

So like how are we using AI ourselves within a university group?

Don 44:59

In addressing the the skills gaps and the problems.

Mat 45:02

Well, for us, we have now MBAs and postgraduate certificates in AI. And it does it's not about being um an evangelist or prescriptive and telling people what to do and how to do it. It's getting people to understand what is possible, what are the right questions to be asking, what are the areas to be looking at, and well, like I was saying before, having that holistic approach because there's been problems that Amazon's had in rolling out AI initiatives, problems that the FBI's had in rolling out AI initiatives. So it's not all good news. There's threats as well. But if you coming, if you're coming from a trained mindset of how to look at a problem and try to solve it through the use of advanced technology, and AI is only one, it's obviously a buzz, but there's a million different technologies, biotech, and lots of different things that are impacting on our world. Um, but having the mindset to be able to solve these challenges. And I think just as a concluding remark, what I would say we're trying to do, which I think is very impactful, is we're trying to shift a company to build consultant and problem-solving mindsets within an organization. That's what we're trying to achieve. So companies want to do that because they want their staff to stay and they want to build capacity from within. And the second big motivator, nothing against the big consulting firms, but they charge a lot of money. There is a decline in um jobs and staffing in big consulting companies. There's been a lot of cutbacks in staffing there because a lot of companies are overspending millions and millions of dollars on short-term consulting engagements. It's much better to spend your money on building your own people's capacity than bringing someone in for six months, spending a lot of money, and then that person's left and their knowledge is left as well. Well, what do you think?

Will 46:48

No, bang on. That's what we're finding. Yeah. You know, with the you know, the big four have obviously made a lot of cuts in the consultant area, and we're, you know, we're sort of trying to be a bit more people focused first and then grow from there. And I mean it costs money, but that's all that's where we're approaching it. So agreed.

Quickfire Leadership Rules And Wrap

Don 47:04

Man, I think we should get to the uh quick, quiet questions. Absolutely.

Magnus 47:07

Right. One thing the world doesn't know about you.

Mat 47:10

Um that's a good question. Uh probably on the spot with that. One thing the world doesn't know about me. I don't know. Um you can skip that one if you like.

Magnus 47:21

Where do you where do you escape to when you need to think big?

Mat 47:25

Um, that's actually a great question. And I don't really have a place I can say. I would say that that's a challenge I'm trying to address because I would love to have the space to do that more. But when you're busy, busy in the day-to-day. Um, but what's really on my mind is I need to have an answer to that question and be able to do that more.

Magnus 47:43

What's the most mind-blowing place you've delivered a workshop or a class?

Mat 47:47

Oh, um, in Powder Mountain, Utah, I was invited to an education VC conference with a group of amazing people. It was at the top of a ski mountain in this beautiful private resort, and it was just incredible. You had all these amazing speakers, but it was in a ski mountain, and half the people are dressed kind of like, you know, in shirts and pants, and half the people got goggles on their heads and ski boots on, and it was just an incredible combination of fitness and exercise and nature and uh great topics, and so I'd say Powder Mountain, Utah. You choose that over Necker Island. Uh Necker Island was very interesting, but uh that was more entertainment, I'd say.

Magnus 48:28

Who inspires your leadership style the most?

Mat 48:31

Um, I really gravitate towards risk-taking and innovating entrepreneurs. So I like the style of people um like Nolan Bushnell from Atari who, you know, will have a vision and go out and market that vision before they've even really figured out how they're gonna do it, but they know what the end goal is. Um, and there are examples in history of people who have got ideas where the technology doesn't quite exist yet, but they know they need to develop that technology, and that's really groundbreaking and exciting. What do you struggle with? Um, I struggle with balance. So um working in different time zones, and I'm really passionate about the work that I do. You look like you're a pretty fit guy. Um so I'm sure you're exercising as well. And one of the things I'm always struggling with is I've got to find time to be healthy, I've got to find time to exercise, and it can't just be about you know building an organization.

Magnus 49:28

It's my biggest one too. Balancing complacement and contentment is something I'm struggling with.

Don 49:37

You fly helicopters, you've just written a book and published it. Wow, yeah. No, that's wow.

Magnus 49:43

This is uh a question that Will had, which I think is a great question. Non-negotiable behaviors from those around you that they must buy into.

Mat 49:52

Well, there's really only one for us, and we really try to strive for this as an organization. And we really, and especially, you know, I'm a little bit older now, and I'm not interested in working with anyone that we don't want to work with. So we just want people that deal with people with respect, um, are nice people to work with. You enjoy coming to work, you enjoy the people that you work with. There's always issues that you have to resolve sometimes in in that type of context, but that is absolutely the non-negotiable. We can debate forever about different ideas of, you know, assessment should be done this way. No, I don't agree. It should be done that way. But you can still do it in a friendly and respectful way. So that's the only non-negotiable.

Magnus 50:34

I love it. What don't you learn at university?

Mat 50:37

A whole lot of stuff. Almost everything that you need to know.

Magnus 50:41

What's the one thing every entrepreneur should do every day?

Mat 50:45

Um, I think for me anyway, and I would say this is true for entrepreneurs, you know, you're very, very dedicated and focused on building something. When you're working in any entrepreneurial endeavor, it is all-consuming. That's why I mentioned about balance. But learning and research broadly, I'm not talking about just doing a degree, I'm talking about just reading what's going on in the world, reading publications, reading a report from McKinsey's. Um, you know, Bill Gates, I really believe in what he talks about of getting up really early and trying to read for two hours a day. Um, that's very hard for most people to do, but I think that broadening of the mind is really critical, not just being an expert in what you know, but trying to open your mind to new things.

Magnus 51:25

What's one book that's changed the way you think?

Mat 51:28

Um, one book, well, I did uh a um humanities degree and a master's in literature. So I read quite a few books. Um, and there's probably quite a few books that I think are really impactful, but I really like biographies because of kind of maybe that's an influence of learning from world leaders. Um so I've read lots of biographies, whether it's you know historical, I like history from Margaret Thatcher or or Winston Churchill um to reading Richard Branson's book you mentioned about uh Necker Island. So probably um biographical um would be my go-to.

Magnus 52:06

Smartest person you've sat at a table with.

Mat 52:10

Well, that's a hard one.

Magnus 52:12

You've sat at a table with some smart people, I believe.

Mat 52:14

Yeah, I just um had a webinar with uh one of the world's best known neuroscientists, PhD from Oxford University, who's in our global leaders faculty. She's just an incredibly, incredibly smart person, but in a very specialized area. And then um I uh was working with the commander of the International Space Station just recently, and the diverse thinking, because you know, when you're on a space station, you don't call RACV or whatever you call it here, um, NRMA or something because something goes wrong. You just have to be so multi-skilled to deal with the unexpected, and that type of mind is incredibly um exciting as well. So Terry Verts, who's now actually running for US uh Senate, um, so we're hoping he does right.

Magnus 53:02

Fascinating conversation. Last question finish this sentence. Success without is meaningless.

Mat 53:09

Success without integrity and happiness is meaningless.

Magnus 53:16

Very, very well said, mate. I know you need to jump on a plane. Thank you so much for joining us. We've been an absolute delight. Thank you. Pleasure.

Don 53:23

Thanks, guys. Pleasure's been ours. We need to talk about America. We need to talk about starting a university in the US. There's so much to talk about. So I love you.

Magnus 53:31

We didn't get to Silicon Valley.

Don 53:32

We did not even get to the US. So um, this has been about the Australian sort of part of the podcast. We'll do an American. You let me know when. We'd love to. Thanks, guys.

Mat 53:40

Appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Cheers. Thanks. Awesome.

Magnus 53:43

Hope you enjoyed this exciting episode of the Mastering Podcast. If you got value from today's conversation, hit that subscribe button now and share this episode with a friend. Until next time.