Most universities agree that career outcomes matter. The harder question is how to give every student meaningful work experience before graduation.

In Episode 7 of The Unpulled Lever, Rod Danan talks with Chris Parrish, co-founder and president of Podium Education, about building experiential learning into the degree instead of leaving students to compete for a limited supply of internships.

Chris explains what experiential learning is, how employer projects can run for academic credit, and how schools can layer career discovery, rotations, and deeper project work from the first year through graduation. They discuss the difference between “roads” careers, where the major points toward the first job, and “rivers” careers, where students need more exposure to discover a direction.

The conversation also covers how universities align career and academic leadership, create a front porch for employers, evaluate pilots and vendors, and use high-impact practices as part of a retention strategy. Chris previews an Arizona State University study of about 6,000 undergraduates in which students who completed the Podium experience were between six and ten percentage points more likely to be retained the following year.

Connect with Chris and explore the work:

Podium Education: https://podiumeducation.com/

Chris Parrish on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-j-parrish

Podium Education on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/podiumeducation

Podium Education retention research: https://www.podiumeducation.com/research-news

University Business coverage: https://universitybusiness.com/here-is-new-proof-that-experiential-learning-works/

The Unpulled Lever is a weekly interview series about why schools do not act on career outcomes, and how leaders can pull the lever.

The four-year degree is still the default. For a growing number of learners, it is not the only path to a good job.

Kathleen deLaski founded Education Design Lab after seeing colleges struggle to respond to MOOCs, boot camps, changing employer needs, and pressure to unbundle the degree. She now serves as the Lab's board chair and writes Who Needs College Anymore?

Kathleen explains how community colleges are becoming regional talent hubs, why short-term credentials need to stack toward degrees, and what it takes to build a pathway with learners and employers in the room. She shares the apprenticeship experiment that failed, a behavioral-health pathway that forced employers to rethink entry-level roles, and why the hiring system is breaking under AI-generated resumes.

Chapters

00:00 Why Education Design Lab had to exist

04:31 Starting with design sprints at George Mason

06:35 The apprenticeship experiment that failed

08:08 Why community colleges moved first

15:21 Workforce Pell and the outcomes data problem

25:48 How micro-pathways are designed

30:00 Rebuilding the behavioral health pathway

33:34 AI can open up career pathways

38:34 The half-life of skills is getting shorter

43:18 Reimagining hiring with design thinking

45:51 Is skills-based hiring real yet?

48:44 What colleges should stop funding

50:07 The growth is in shorter credentials

51:06 Why Northeastern's co-op model matters

52:19 What an 18-year-old should do now

54:16 Where to follow Kathleen's work

Connect with Kathleen

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleen-delaski-1089012b

Substack: https://kathleendelaski.substack.com/

Book: https://www.whoneedscollegeanymore.org/

Education Design Lab: https://educationdesignlab.org/

Education Design Lab on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/education-design-lab/

Education Design Lab on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@eddesignlab/videos

Getting students hired is the cheapest retention lever a school has, and almost nobody pulls it. The Unpulled Lever talks to the leaders who can help us learn why and how to fix it.

Subscribe for a new conversation every week.

Why do universities map every academic requirement while leaving students to improvise the path from campus to work?

In Episode 5 of The Unpulled Lever, Rod Danan talks with Kemi Jona, Vice Provost of Online Education and Digital Innovation at the University of Virginia, about building career-connected learning that works for students with real constraints.

They discuss why online is not the same as flexible, the hidden operating system behind Northeastern's co-op model, UVA's effort to build a career journey instead of a petting zoo of disconnected platforms, and Kemi's plan to "flood the zone" with employer-connected experiences in classes, capstones, breaks, clubs, and asynchronous programs.

The conversation also covers the data plumbing universities need to see who is being left behind, how AI changes the compact between students and colleges, and why Kemi compares college to a gym membership.

Connect with Kemi and explore the work:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kemijona/

UVA OEDI: https://oedi.provost.virginia.edu/

AI4VA: https://ai4va.org/

UVA Career Academies: https://oedi.provost.virginia.edu/uva-career-academies

Riipen: https://www.riipen.com/

Burning Glass Institute: https://www.burningglassinstitute.org/

The Unpulled Lever is a weekly interview series from Rod Danan, founder of Prentus, on why schools don't act on career outcomes.

prentus.com

An internship matters more than a major for a graduate's odds of landing a good job. Brandon Busteed has the data to back that up.

Brandon is the CEO of Edconic and the former leader of Gallup's education and workforce practice. He helped build the Gallup-Purdue Index, a study of more than 100,000 college graduates that asked a question rankings still dodge: which college experiences actually lead to a good job and a good life?

In this episode, Brandon joins Rod Danan to explain the six experiences that double the odds of workplace engagement and wellbeing, why fewer than 3 percent of graduates report having all six, and why a university does not need an elite brand or a giant endowment to compete.

They also get into LinkedIn's hidden university ranking, the shortage of internships, why paid work is not automatically work-integrated learning, and the uncomfortable truth about Ivy League graduates ending up in business development without ever being taught sales.

Chapters

00:00 The Gallup-Purdue question

03:30 Why one university cannot grade itself

11:46 The six experiences that change outcomes

20:18 What a good college outcome actually is

27:04 Why not all work counts as learning

32:05 Career cannot live in an isolated office

35:07 LinkedIn's hidden university ranking

40:33 The job Ivy League graduates end up doing

42:22 The internship supply problem

48:36 Why internships beat majors

50:20 College's local value proposition

54:18 Quick fire and High Point University

Getting students hired is the cheapest retention lever a school has, and almost nobody pulls it. The Unpulled Lever talks to the leaders who can help us learn why and how to fix it.

Subscribe for a new conversation every week.

Michael Horn predicted in 2013 that a quarter of colleges would close. Fifteen percent already have. Now he says a fifth of private colleges will close or merge within ten years, and the schools left standing will win on one thing: whether they actually get their students hired.

In this episode, Michael Horn (co-host of Future U with Jeff Selingo, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, author of Job Moves and Choosing College) joins host Rod Danan to break down why skills-based hiring keeps failing, why 50 to 85 percent of jobs come through networks and not applications, and what new federal accountability rules mean for colleges that can't prove a return on investment.

With Michael Horn of @michaelbhorn.

Getting students hired is the cheapest retention lever a school has, and almost nobody pulls it. The Unpulled Lever talks to the leaders who can help us learn why, and how to fix it.

Subscribe for a new conversation every week.

Andy Chan, VP for Innovation and Career Development at Wake Forest University, joins Rod Danan to explain why more than 200 colleges have sent staff to study his office. They get into his 2013 TED talk "Career Services Must Die", why the boss matters more than the org chart, the ten-minute LinkedIn search that changed a writing class, curiosity conversations instead of networking, and what he'd fund first if he had to rebuild a career office from zero. The Unpulled Lever is an interview series on why schools don't act on career outcomes. New episodes every Tuesday.

Jason Altmire, President and CEO of CECU and a former U.S. Congressman, joins Rod Danan to explain why career schools have been graded on job placement for years while most of higher ed never had to answer the same question. They dig into the new federal accountability law, the stigma that still follows for-profit schools, and what actually keeps a student enrolled through graduation. The Unpulled Lever is an interview series on why schools don't act on career outcomes. New episodes every two weeks.