The Rant Podcast
A bi-weekly podcast focused on pulling back the curtain on the American higher education system and breaking down the people, the policies and the politics. The podcast host, Eloy Ortiz Oakley, is a known innovator and leader in higher education. The podcast will not pull any punches as it delves into tough questions about the culture, politics and policies of our higher education system.
The Rant Podcast
Navigating the Next Four Years with Brandon Busteed of BrandEd
Ever wondered how immersive, real-world learning can redefine higher education? Join us as we engage with Brandon Busteed, the innovative CEO of BrandEd, as he unravels the transformative power of work-based learning, especially during disruptive times like the Trump years ahead. Brandon shares his unique vision for BrandEd since his 2024 appointment, highlighting partnerships with prestigious brands such as The New York Times, Sotheby's, Manchester City and Vogue. These collaborations offer students extraordinary hands-on experiences that bridge education and career mobility, from pre-college programs to custom master's degrees. Get ready to unlock the potential of global collaborations in education. We'll explore how BrandEd teams up with industry giants to provide students with behind-the-scenes access and professional insights. By integrating experts as educators and leveraging real organizational spaces, students gain unmatched exposure to their fields of interest. We spotlight the pivotal role of early industry exposure in pre-college programs and the ever-growing impact of technology and AI. Our discussion also highlights BrandEd's commitment to diverse, inclusive education through significant scholarship initiatives, ensuring learners from all backgrounds are empowered. Looking ahead, we delve into BrandEd's role as a strategic partner for educational institutions worldwide. Discover how their institutional partnership team is crafting connections with schools and colleges to offer distinctive programs like the Vogue and Manchester City Sports Business School. Through Brandon's personal anecdotes, we emphasize the joy and engagement in learning. Wrapping up, we invite you to explore the dynamic educational landscapes BrandEd offers. Visit their website for more details, and stay connected with us for enriching conversations that redefine learning.
https://branded-edu.com/
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eloy@4leggedmedia.com
Hi, I'm Eloy Ortiz-Oakley and welcome back to the Rant Podcast, a podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies and the politics of our higher education system. Welcome to the second in a series of episodes that we're doing focused on leading higher education through the Trump years, and I want to emphasize the word leading, as opposed to just laying low and hoping nobody notices you over the next four years. Leading to me means stepping up and showing up for learners of all backgrounds, particularly those learners who have been underserved. In this episode, I highlight the importance of work-based learning and embedding economic and career mobility into programs of study. Learners of all stripes expect value from their post-secondary experience. Value from their post-secondary experience and seeing how their learning connects to the new world of work is exactly what institutions need to be doing To highlight work-based learning.
Eloy Ortiz Oakley:I talk with Brandon Busteed, CEO of BrandEd. BrandEd partners with some of the world's most iconic brands and provides unique post-secondary experiences to learners throughout the globe. I talk with Brandon about his recent move to take the reins at BrandEd and his plans for the organization. We also talk about BrandEd's one-of-a-kind model and how learners benefit from their direct experience of working and learning with such name brands as the New York Times. Experience of working and learning with such name brands as the New York Times, Sotheby's and Vogue. So, with that backdrop, enjoy my conversation with Brandon Busteed. Brandon, welcome to the Rant Podcast.
Brandon Busteed:Thank you, Eloy. I've always wanted to go on a rant, so I'm glad to be on The Rant and it's a pleasure to see you. Thanks for having me.
Eloy Ortiz Oakley:Well, you picked the right place to rant, so welcome to the podcast. It's great pleasure to see you. Thanks for joining me. Welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you, Brandon. I know how busy you are a lot going on these days in your part of the world. But let me begin by asking you you recently took on the role as CEO. I believe it was somewhere around early 2024. Tell us about what you were doing before you landed at Brand Ed and since you've been here, what do you think about the organization and what do you think about doing with the organization?
Brandon Busteed:Yeah, there's a lot in there. But you know I'm coming up on almost a year, so it'll be a year, you know, at the top of the top of the year of January and you know, look, there's a couple of. So it'll be a year. You know, at the top of the top of the year of January and, and you know, look there's. There's a couple of things I'll say about it. It's been an incredible year of learning for me, right, even though I've been in the higher ed and the broader education landscape for a long time. It's such a fascinating and unique organization and model that, uh, that I've I've really enjoyed the learning curve for me, and I'll say more about that learning curve because, as you know, we work with iconic brands in different industries, and so I've also just been learning, quite frankly, about new organizations and industries that I'd had previously relatively little exposure to in my own background.
Brandon Busteed:But I joined BrandEd for a really specific reason, when I looked at what the organization was doing, the kinds of programs it was delivering. This is across the board. We offer pre-college programs for high school students, programs for undergraduates, study away, study abroad type programs, and then, at least with Vogue and with Sotheby's, we offer very bespoke master's degree programs. So we're really running the gamut of non-credit pre-college programs all the way up to master's degree programs. But the theme throughout all of our work is that I have never seen better industry immersive education than what we do across Brandit.
Brandon Busteed:And when I say industry immersive education, I mean it's not just immersive with the brands that we have partnerships with. It's really understanding the industries they operate within. It's understanding the jobs and roles across those industries, things that most students, regardless of age, quite frankly, have had very little exposure to. They get to work on hands-on projects, they get to interact with real industry experts. They get behind the scenes access to these iconic organizations, and so it's this really incredible blend where, quite frankly, you look at these programs and you say I wish I could do them right, or I want to do one of these programs, and so to me, that was the real appeal. That was the real appeal. I've always believed in the value of work-integrated learning. When I looked at what Brand Ed was doing, I just said to myself this is the best stuff I've seen and I would love to be part of it. So it's been a lot of fun. We got a lot of work ahead of us, but for me it's just been a fascinating learning curve.
Eloy Ortiz Oakley:A lot of what you mentioned really is all about this immersive experience in a workplace. It's what we call work-based learning. Basically, it's immersing yourself not only in the education, the learning, but also being able to, as you mentioned, work hands-on in a particular industry in a particular workplace. There's a lot of talk today about workplace learning, but that's something you've been doing for a long time there at BrandEd. Tell us about how those experiences work for the learner.
Brandon Busteed:And you know a little bit of this is my own origin story in terms of kind of how and why I got to BrandEd. So I'll just briefly say one of the things that I did prior was I was a Kaplan right global education organization and one of my roles there was global head of learned work innovation. So anything that sat in that space, you know, I got involved in, and before that I was at Gallup, the famous research organization that is the executive director of education and workforce development, and I say that in that there's been a real theme in my career. All those have been very distinct at different roles and organizations. That theme of sitting at the intersection of learning and work has really been part of it. And I go back to some of the big studies that I helped lead when I was at Gallup.
Brandon Busteed:Looking at you know what really about an education experience? What about it leads to success later in life, whether that's work, whether that's overall well-being, et cetera. And it was at the core work-integrated learning opportunities, an internship, a co-op experience, right, something that was a long-term project where a student had to work on it over multiple months and get iterative feedback, et cetera. So things that mimic work experience. And so I say that as a backdrop because, as we get to what Brand Ed is doing, we work right now with four iconic organizations the New York Times, with what we run in partnership with them, the School of the New York Times. We work with Manchester City, the famous football club. We run the Manchester City Sports Business School, and then we run Vogue College of Fashion and Sotheby's Institute of Art, and so obviously very different industries sport, fashion, art, you know, journalism, media but you know, consistently, across all of those, it is really in-depth exposure for the business of fashion, right, to understand the different roles that somebody might be able to do in these industries and then to have some real, actual experiences.
Brandon Busteed:So it's not an internship, right, we're not running internships. I actually think we're running something that might be better because it's fully curated. All of our programs are essentially co-taught between industry experts, people who are in the job right now, and educational experts, what you would think of as teachers or faculty, and so it's not just an invited guest lecturer who comes in and visits, right. I mean, these things are I'll use the word curated in a co-teaching fashion between the experts and the educational guides and advisors, and so I think that's a lot of the magic of what we created here.
Brandon Busteed:We create internship-like projects for students to work on, but in many cases they actually get better and more substantive feedback in our environment than they would in an internship environment those of you who've had internships right now. They're good ones and there are not so good ones, and you know it hinges on did you have a good manager in that role? Were you given a meaningful project? Did you get any valuable feedback on that project, as opposed to just being handed something and you elements of meeting and understanding people in the various jobs and then getting iterative feedback from those types of folks in the context of our programs. You know that is consistent across all that we do. That's a lot of the really special secret sauce, if you will, about why students really love these programs and we have students who come to our programs and one of the most common refrains is oh my gosh, that felt so different than school. This is not like anything else I've ever done before. So you know you're hitting the mark when it really feels so distinguished to the students who experience it.
Eloy Ortiz Oakley:Well, you certainly are coming of age at a perfect time, because everybody is talking about this kind of experience, everybody's trying to replicate this kind of experience, and so that's probably a lot to learn from what you all have already developed. Now, a big part of this, as you mentioned, a big part of the secret sauce of a quality workplace learning opportunity, is the employer's involvement, and I know lots of institutions are trying to find that right employer partnership. You mentioned the four brands that you're working with. Big brands, big names. What does a partnership look like with that organization and what's their commitment to the learning experience?
Brandon Busteed:Yeah, it's a great question. I think you know there are certainly lessons that have been learned in the context of Brand Ed, but actually, in sharing them, I think you know they're potentially applicable to other organizations you know, including colleges and universities or high schools who are thinking about trying to ramp these kinds of experiences up for students. And I'll say, you know, clearly, all the partners we work with, one of the you know consistent themes across them, even though they're totally different industries right, and came to BrandEd in unique, you know, very bespoke ways. They're all very deeply interested in the talent development pipeline for their industry, not just for their own organization, but for their organization and the industry writ large. And I think they've all taken the view that they need to think about the broader talent development for the industry, not just their own organization, because what it requires is a real investment of time and energy to, you know, to invest in that future generation. And it's not as simple, as you know, just doing it at the master's degree level, that's valuable, or the undergrad level valuable, but earlier and earlier, younger and younger in somebody's educational trajectory, giving them more exposure to the art of the possible, as we always like to talk about. And so to your question what do they contribute? Certainly, it's their brand and the knowledge that's inherent in these iconic brands.
Brandon Busteed:Organizations that have been around for hundreds of years have a global footprint and recognition, but it's access to the folks who work there, right? So we have, in many cases, faculty in our programs are folks who are employed at our partner organizations, who are lending their time to teaching students and interacting with students in terms of creating projects, giving feedback on those projects. We also get behind the scenes access to facilities, headquarters you know, the Sotheby's Auction House, or to visit the New York Times headquarters, whatever the example might be. The students coming into our Vogue programs are going into the Vogue photo shoot studios within the Condé Nast headquarters, right? I mean, they're accessing real things within these organizations, and so it really is a pretty profound commitment to our partnership. We're operating these programs, we're running these programs on behalf of the brands, but the brands are very involved and also play a pretty big role in shaping the ultimate design of the programs, right? So our teams will create that, but we do it very much in partnership with the brands that we work with, and so it is a true partnership type of framework in terms of how we think about it.
Brandon Busteed:But I really give credit to you know each of them for taking what I call the long view on talent development. Like, if we really want to invest in talent, we can't just, you know, start at a middle age uh, you know, worker. I mean that that's helpful if you're thinking about trying to switch careers or change, get a job or promotion. But the issue we have in a lot of industries is is by middle school or high school. If students can't see it, they can't be it, and that's a really big commitment to understand the world of fashion in high school. That's a huge leg up over, you know, understanding it later in life. And so I'm really excited to be able to work with organizations that take that long view and see their role not just for their own benefit but for the benefit of the broader industry as well.
Eloy Ortiz Oakley:Now there's a lot of talk about how technology is reshaping the workforce, it's reshaping employers, it's reshaping the learning environment, and I would imagine that these four brands that you've mentioned are looking at ways to harness technology, harness AI, in their businesses. How are learners exposed to the changes in that industry and how AI is impacting those industries?
Brandon Busteed:Yeah, it's interesting. We've had an ongoing task force inside BrandEd that's been thinking about AI from many angles. You know how do we want to teach students about it. You know how do we want to incorporate it. But one of the guideposts that we have utilized in this process is just a very simple question how is AI being used within the partner organizations that we work with, and to what degree can we extract that in as real time as possible in terms of how we allow students to understand that right? So we're not going outside the lines in terms of what we think.
Brandon Busteed:You know our own opinion of how AI should be used in educational setting, in the classroom. We're looking at the organizations we work with, understanding how they're currently using AI and, of course, some are using it more than others. Right, there's examples where in different pieces of their organizations, ai is a prevalent use case and in other parts of the organization it's almost like you wouldn't know it existed, right? So we're taking the cue for how these businesses are using AI and we're using that as the way in which we think about how we teach students about AI.
Brandon Busteed:Certainly, technology, broadly defined, is shaping a lot of these industries. I mean, you think about the newspaper industry, which is where an organization like the New York Times started, versus what their business is today. I mean digital media and technology has been a major part of the story of the ongoing evolution of the New York Times you could argue revolutionary at certain points in its history in terms of the changes it's made because of technology. So our guidepost is how is this being used and thought about in the organization we work with and bring that to students in that context?
Eloy Ortiz Oakley:Now your students. What do they look like? How do they find you?
Brandon Busteed:It's, first of all, global. I mean we operate physical entities, classrooms, campuses in New York City and London and Madrid, and then in Manchester with our partnership with man City, so we have place-based students. We certainly have students who are taking online programs that we offer. We launched one of our first online master's degree programs, master in Art Business, this past year. There was a huge hit with students who can't come to New York City or London in person for a full-time program. You know the story working adults who want to act, solicit, and so we certainly have examples of online offerings in it. But our audience is global. About 35% of our students are students who live outside of the United States, so still the largest percentage of our students are from the US, but a pretty substantial international population, if you kind of look at it, across our programs. And then, of course, the other way to answer the question is our pre-college programs through master's degrees. Those are obviously very different age, demographics and markets, and so within our pre-college programs we have an incredibly diverse set of students who are coming to us from all over the world, from all different socioeconomic backgrounds, race, religion. I mean it's an incredible sight to see students in. You know the two-week programs we run for the School of the New York Times or in Manchester at the Etihad campus there where we run programs within Sotheby's Art Program. So that certainly is a big part of it.
Brandon Busteed:And we've made a very big commitment Brand Ed has from the very beginning long before my arrival, but something that I have certainly embraced where we put a significant portion of our budget every year to student scholarship. We self-fund it. These are not scholarship programs that are being supported by philanthropy externally. We'd love that at some point, we'd invite that at any given moment. But we've made a commitment and our brand partners have too through us to saying we want to make sure that students can come to these programs.
Brandon Busteed:If they can't afford it. Obviously a big portion of our students are paying for it themselves, or their parents are paying for it themselves or they're having it sponsored through their high school or their college as a program. That's part of their tuition, as part of that. But we've made a really big commitment to scholarship and you see it play out. If you showed up in our classrooms, if you saw some of our programs, you'll see incredible diversity every way. You'll hear that diversity, you'll see in the diversity of thought and interactions that students are having. It's a big part of what we believe our DNA is and what we think makes the program successful for students as well.
Eloy Ortiz Oakley:What does success look like for your learners?
Brandon Busteed:The throughput is clearly we have students coming to us for something different that they aren't getting at school. They aren't getting in college and in some cases they aren't getting from their paid job right or they're not able to get an internship. So you know, here's a really good stat there were 8.2 million college students this year in the United States who wanted an internship. Only 3.6 million got one. So we have this huge gap between supply and demand and obviously off the charts demand for students looking for an internship. Only 3.6 million of those 8.2 got one. And then of that 3.6 million, 2.5 million had a quality experience. So just because you got an internship doesn't mean it was necessarily a high quality experience or internship. I bring that up because we are really an option to scale work, integrated learning, in ways that internships don't. I'm a huge fan of internships. I don't know that there's a bigger fan of internships in the country than I am, but I also recognize that they just don't scale. There's no evidence that the number of internships offered in the United States has grown in the last 30, 40 years. And so back to your question of how do we measure success? Right, it is moving students on a career trajectory, plain and simple. Now for pre-college students, that's I have a better understanding of an industry. This is definitely what I want to do for my career, or no, actually it's not what I want to do Gives me a better understanding of what I might want to major in in college. As a result of going to these programs, I'm already building a Rolodex of contacts in an industry people who will act as a reference or a referral for me, right? So, although our outcome for a high school student is that they get a job at the end of our two-week program, we are definitely moving them significantly forward on a career trajectory. We're allowing them to add New York Times on their resume, or Manchester City Sports Business School it stands out. It stands out on a resume a job application, a college application.
Brandon Busteed:Now for our undergraduate students who are coming to our study away immersive experiences. They're a little further along and they're thinking about what they want to do in a career. They may have already decided that their major is what they want to do in their jobs, and so the four-week summer programs that we offer within that realm for undergraduates certainly allows them to do some of those same things. Right. Make contacts in an industry, get a better understanding of it, so that when they go out and pursue jobs in that industry they sound much more informed than the average applicant. And then for our master's degree students, eloy, it's really simple. They want a job in this industry.
Brandon Busteed:They come to Sotheby's Institute of Art, they want a job in the art world, and that doesn't always mean a job in an auction house, right? For many of them. They go into museum curation or other nonprofit organizations where art is a core of the organization. And for those I mean, I'll just give you a stat. If you look at NACE data, the average ratio of students to career advisors for US colleges and universities is 1,583 to 1. Okay, that's NACE data, right Average ratio. So for every career advisor they are supposedly responsible for supporting over 1,500 students. That's our national average. At Brand Ed, ours is under 80 to 1. So we're literally 20 times better than the national average. I don't know if that's a huge bragging point, other than to say simply that we've invested considerable resources because we know that is what students are coming to us for. They're coming to us for industry-specific understanding and they want to get a job in that industry. So for our master's degree students. We measure success by job placement rates and their satisfaction with those job placements.
Eloy Ortiz Oakley:Well, I think you're hitting on something that is certainly a big topic of discussion right now across the higher education marketplace. It is economic mobility outcomes, measuring them, talking about them, highlighting them, because that's what learners are telling us they're looking for. Yes, the full experience is great for their lifetime benefit, but having an opportunity to get into a career, understanding how to use the learning that you're getting to apply that to a career, is so important. So you know you guys are spot on. Right now let's talk about the future of Branded. We live in uncertain times in the higher education marketplace. A lot has transpired over the last five, six, seven years. We've had a pandemic, we've had global recessions, we've had closing of many small liberal arts colleges throughout the country, a lot of institutions are struggling for enrollment and now the pendulum is going to swing again in terms of federal higher education policy. How do you see Brand Ed thriving in that uncertainty and what do you see as the future?
Brandon Busteed:I think you've highlighted a few of the things in terms of you were mentioning the headwinds and challenges facing higher ed. I mean, one of the biggest ones is fundamentally a question about value, the value proposition of a degree, and that's a combination of a whole bunch of stuff the price tag, you know, the outcomes in terms of career outcomes, and so all that goes into a formula that increasingly more prospective students and their families are making in a much more sophisticated way than we have in the past. Yeah, no doubt. Right, the work readiness of a graduate is at the top of the list in terms of what colleges are trying to improve upon, what prospective students and their families are evaluating in an institution, and colleges and universities, quite frankly, have just struggled to scale these things. So it's not that it isn't happening, it's that it's not at scale. So I'll use another statistic. It's not at scale, so I'll use another statistic. About a third of college graduates in the US have an internship that they can apply what they're learning in the classroom during college. Right, about a third. So it's not zero. But the majority miss out on what is one of the most important value propositions of college having an internship or a work experience where they can see the dots connected between their academic experience and that particular experience.
Brandon Busteed:So for the future for Brand Ed, I think it's an incredibly bright one because we can now act as a partner to not just colleges and universities but high schools who are looking to embed these kinds of programs in their academic structure. So prior to my arrival, we never had an institutional partnership team or function. That was one of the first things that we created when I arrived. So we have a team that's focused on building partnerships with domestic high schools in the US, with international high schools around the world, and then a team that's working on partnerships with colleges and universities, where we're not replacing the bachelor's degree, we're not replacing the high school education, we're enhancing it greatly. And we can enhance that for an individual student who might come to one of our programs, regardless of whether their school or college is partnering with us on it. But imagine, you know, imagine you're a student at a college that is partnered with Brand Ed and has access to a four-week Vogue program over the summer or a January term program, right, where you can get some really in-depth exposure to these things. It's different than an internship, but all the ways we've talked about, I'd argue might be more valuable, especially when you think about the iconic brand that goes on your resume. As a result, it's certainly more scalable, and so that's where I think we have a very promising future is, you know, to be a partner to colleges, universities, to high schools, where we enhance that work, readiness, experience for students.
Brandon Busteed:And I'll say just one thing we talk a lot about all kinds of things completion rates and what our yield is, and admissions and student faculty ratio and all these things. I look at the engagement level of students in programs as one of the most important litmus tests of the future of an organization, and when I look at the level of engagement that students have in our programs, I mean, dare I say, fun is like a word that they'll use when they're involved in our program. They're doing real work. They're, you know, spending the vast majority of their time on task, engaged in something. But I mean it is engaging, it's fun, it's exciting. And you know what? I think we've lost track of the engaging, fun, exciting parts of education as well. I think we bring a really cool dimension of that to the table as well.
Eloy Ortiz Oakley:Well, I think that's right on. I think that's a lot of what learners are looking for Not only having that practical experience and understanding of how to apply your learning to your economic future, but also enjoying it. I mean, it's amazing how much better you learn when you're actually enjoying what you're working on. Now let me ask you one last question as we begin to wrap up. You've now had a great opportunity to get to know the organization. You have wonderful plans for the future. You've added wonderful features to the program and the offerings. If there was a program that you could dive into, that you could take, what would it be?
Brandon Busteed:Yeah, Well, so, first of all, I'm actually in the middle of taking one of our online Sotheby's courses on the art of buying and selling at auction Not that I'm planning to go to auction, but it's a fast reading world to understand. I never knew really anything about it before I came to Brand Ed, and so I actually am enrolled in one of our current online programs. I've sat in on pretty much every example of programs. We've run Our pre-college programs. I sat in on several classes this past summer with our school, the New York Times, and listened to journalists from the New York Times teaching students about investigative journalism and a, but also the teachers, the faculty, the experts who were part of it. You know the joy of teaching and giving something back there, and so so, look, I try to sit in as an observer on as many of these pre-college programs as possible. Obviously, I can't actually attend one, but I am enrolling my kids in them.
Brandon Busteed:My daughter attended one of our Vogue programs in London. We were there over the summer, and so, look, I honestly recommend it to anybody who has a kid in the high school age realm to check out our programs. But look, it's hard to pick because, although I'm not a fashionista, I didn't have previous interest in the art world. I find it all fascinating and applicable to a whole bunch of other things. So for me it's like a kid in a candy store just knowing that we run these programs, being able to visit and audit a few of them. But yeah, I can't really pick if you were to give me the full gamut, but I am excited to attend this summer. I'm going to be able to jump in and see some of the Manchester City Sports Business School program stuff. That's the only pre-college program that I haven't sat in on, so I'll get some exposure to that this summer.
Eloy Ortiz Oakley:That's great. One last thing If somebody is listening in, how do they find you? How do they explore the programs that you just mentioned?
Brandon Busteed:So our website is branded-educom, so you know branded-educom. You can also try to find me on LinkedIn, because I'll be a direct source to the appropriate contact within the organization, but that's the best place to go on the website and and or find me on LinkedIn. There's there's only one Brandon Busty there. There's, at least as of today, there's only one. There's only one of us on LinkedIn.
Eloy Ortiz Oakley:So and I guess there was no coincidence that Brandon and Brand Ed sounds so familiar.
Brandon Busteed:Well, I knew you and I were joking about it and there's a lot of people who think that you know I started my own company, right, Because Grand Ed, like you, named it after yourself. But the truth of the matter is it just happens to be a coincidence that my name shares many letters with the organization. But it's been a thrill to be part of it and I'm looking forward to a really bright, exciting future for us and for the students who are going through our programs.
Eloy Ortiz Oakley:Well, listen, Brandon, I really appreciate you taking the time to join us. It's been a fascinating conversation. So thanks for being on the rant. Thanks, Eloy, it's been a lot of fun. Really appreciate it. All right, Thanks for joining us everyone. I hope you've enjoyed my conversation with Brandon Bastide, CEO of BrandEd. To learn more about BrandEd, you can visit their website at wwwbranded-educom. I'll put the link in the comment section of this podcast. Thanks for joining us here on the Rant. If you enjoyed this episode, hit the like button on this YouTube channel, hit subscribe, continue to follow us on your favorite podcast platforms and we'll be back to you soon with more great content. Take care, everybody. Thank you.
