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Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich and I last connected in 2019, when she was the vice provost of digital and continuing education at Louisiana State University. Today, Sasha is the president and CEO of Newstate University, a new institution with the tagline “Radically Affordable. AI-Focused.” I asked if Sasha would be willing to tell us about Newstate University, and she graciously agreed.
Q: Tell us the story behind Newstate University. How and why did this new university come into existence?
A: We founded Newstate University because we believed that a big chunk of the middle class was being left behind and that AI was going to have serious implications for this population.
There are multiple issues that we’re solving with Newstate University that have long plagued higher education. And I want to point out here that these solutions are not uniquely ours. We’re simply the ones who are starting with a blank sheet and building the first AI-founded, AI-focused university.
- Curricular relevance. The curriculum structure at most colleges is prohibitive to the ability to transform and update with speed. Our university approaches curriculum from an agile perspective, constantly getting industry and student feedback and incorporating it.
- Cost. Student loan debt is out of control. AI can dramatically drive down the cost of education, but most institutions will not lower their tuition. We’re radically affordable—we’re self-pay only with a monthly subscription.
- CX pain. You shouldn’t have to go through days or weeks of waiting to find out if you get into a program and then more weeks of waiting to start your program. We have the technology for adults to apply, get accepted and start the same day. We just don’t do it. We’re leveraging principles from SaaS—a PLG (product-led growth) approach that removes the friction from the enrollment process.
There’s been this persistent either-or concept in higher education—either you get career-relevant, shorter form credentials or you get college credit toward a certificate or degree. We—along with many innovators in higher ed—believe this is a false dichotomy. We can have a future that is both-and—both career-relevant short-form training and the ability for all of that learning to count and to stack into a college degree or certificate.
Q: Learners can enroll in degree programs (graduate and undergraduate) and nondegree certificates at Newstate University. How do these programs work? Who develops and teaches the courses? What is the learning experience like? What are the learner costs? What else should we know about Newstate University’s educational offerings?
A: We are so excited to launch with multiple programs—we have everything from an MBAi to credit-bearing certificates, to bachelor’s and associate degrees to microcourses and noncredit professional development programs.
The programs are fully competency-based. Students take one course at a time, and when they successfully complete a course, the next course automatically unlocks. We are utilizing smart defaults like this to ensure that we reduce friction. The courses follow a consistent pattern using best practices in instructional design, with content delivery, exercises, in-line formative questions and case studies. Students have three required multiple-choice tests, a single cumulative project and the creation of a Newstate U Talk explainer video in each course.
Instead of things like discussion boards, we leverage LinkedIn groups to create a community where we post our Real World Conversations podcasts and relevant articles and webinars from the field, solicit feedback on the learning experience, and design networking and real-time events.
We have amazing faculty who are our subject-matter experts for the design process; they also evaluate the projects and engage in the community. We have learning experience designers who leverage AI tools to develop the courses using videos and interactives. We also incorporate microlearning from key providers like Google, IBM, HubSpot, Jira, Amazon, Salesforce and others to ensure that our students are gaining skills across a range of technology tools. We are not test prep—intentionally. Our certificates combine technology skills from across the ecosystem. We have our own certificates that learners get along the way that stack into degrees.
We have an AI coach inside our courses to support our students, which is fantastic, and we have both chat bots and AI chat bots on the website to help support the operational and enrollment process.
We have a progressive credit for prior learning policy—we will block transfer in associate degrees and program-relevant courses. We’ll also accept field-based credentials like the PMP, Product School certificates, Salesforce and Jira certifications, Microsoft, Amazon, and others. We believe strongly that all learning counts.
There are also things we don’t have. We don’t have things like developmental education courses; this university is designed for college-ready individuals who are comfortable with self-service and automated models; that is the only way we can make it so radically affordable.
We also don’t have electives. We have a prescribed course progression for each certificate and degree.
We don’t offer nursing or engineering or legal degrees. We only have degrees in AI, business, CX and digital marketing, project management and product management. We’re leaning into fields where there is a high national demand, with progressively higher wages, where there is not a single credential that is needed, but where a constellation of credentials are meaningful.
These are the fields that most closely aligned with our mission and goal—good jobs for individuals to build strong communities. That only happens when people have meaningful work with good pay.
These are also fields in which we could scale with automation. Our tuition is $300 a month in a subscription-payment format. Learners can start and stop at any time. We need absolute flexibility. We also need rigor. The certificates and degrees have to be meaningful, but getting them shouldn’t produce a lifetime of debt or frustrate learners with red tape.
Q: Starting and running an entirely new postsecondary institution is not the typical career progression for us alternative academics. Please take us through your educational and career progression, and offer some advice for those alt-acs interested in doing something big and bold.
A: I will start by saying that everything I’ve been able to get done (and crushing goals is what gets me up in the morning), has been because of the support and mentorship of amazing individuals. From very early on in my career, people took an interest, and cared, and taught me, and saw things for me that I didn’t even see for myself. It’s really important that we do that for other people. That’s our legacy in the end—the people and things we build up that live beyond us.
One of the things that has been a bit different about my career path is that I have had the opportunity to work in almost every educational environment, from K–12 through a variety of higher ed institutions. I started my career teaching in Cleveland at a challenging K–8 school, moved into curriculum design mainly by accident, then into grant writing and then nonprofit ed tech, where I got to select and implement an LMS for the first time (on a server in a closet!). I moved to a community college and did instructional design. I led the team that launched the first community college MOOC in the nation with a Gates grant (back in the day).
Like many in our field, I never had a position that I pointed at and said, “That’s the role I want.” It was more that online education was the underdog, but it had such a positive impact for people who couldn’t get to a traditional classroom. I wanted to be in a position where I could build better programs, build better pathways—the whole “better, faster, stronger” concept. My career goal was a more amorphous “I want to be in a position where I can make decisions and execute on things.”
I knew that I’d need a Ph.D. to do that. So I started the Ph.D. program in higher education administration at Kent State University, wisely choosing to start while my daughter was 9 months old, then having my son in my second year of coursework. (That was sarcasm.) I wanted to do my research in competency-based education, and was able to do that through the support of some amazing individuals.
I got an opportunity and moved the family to New Hampshire to work at Southern New Hampshire University, leading academic technology, course production and new learning models. I then went to Louisiana State University as the vice president for LSU Online and continuing education, which had 806 online students, and built an amazing team that launched a highly successful statewide OPM across the LSU system (they don’t get enough credit—the team there does amazing work). That LSU OPM now supports 18,000 students. We had some of the first truly stackable learning experiences from noncredit through degrees in the country, particularly at an R-1 flagship.
I moved to working for Pearson Online Learning Services, and then D2L. The project I led at D2L was then spun off into an independent company, and I was made president of it. That experience really opened my eyes to what I could do. I had literally never thought of running a whole business, but nothing was magic about it. It was all figure-out-able.
Through these experiences, I managed to work in almost every part of online higher ed, everything from building a Salesforce and web team to setting up marketing, recruitment and retention, to scaling design practices, to working with education as a benefit. All of those pieces made this idea of starting something new possible.
I’m not sure I’m the person to give career advice. I am not a risk-averse person, and everyone has a different risk profile. For anyone wanting to do something bold, I would say look at the data and then do the thing.
Learn literally everything you can, talk to amazing people, collaborate wherever possible, be deeply grateful for the generosity and kindness of the community, and work your butt off. Stay focused.
There has never been a better time to do something bold and impactful. The cost of building from scratch is far, far, far less than the cost of retrofitting, and you can accomplish more now than ever before. Do the thing.
