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Welcome to the podcast. We call it TWICV. It is our effort to provide a fast-paced, entertaining, and alternative voice to the propaganda and hype flowing out of colleges in America today.
This week in College Viability is a proud affilate of The EdUP Experience podcast network.
Gary Stocker (00:05.4)
Hi, welcome back to a very special episode of this week in college viability. Hi, everybody. Gary Stalker back in front of the Yeti microphone. And today we're talking about college in a different context than financial health and viability. We're talking with Michael Romadka. We're talking with Michael Romadka, who is the founder of Tenprep. It's a dot-com side, and he also has a channel on YouTube. And Michael, thanks for making time to join me this afternoon.
Michael Hromadka (00:31.586)
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Gary.
Gary Stocker (00:33.498)
So before we get started with a couple questions, tell me about Tenon Prep, its history and what you're doing with it.
Michael Hromadka (00:39.254)
Yeah, sure. So tenant prep's kind of my side hustle. So by day I work for a large electric utility in the southeast and I'm in the finance department. Even though I'm a lawyer, that kind of confuses people. But I have a finance degree and I ran away from the full time practice of law as fast as I could after a summer clerkship. So
I mean, that's my day job, but during the pandemic, I was looking for an outlet maybe to do something else. And something I love is leading trainings. So I created a side company called Ten and Prep. I'd really focused on leading trainings at colleges and universities, but it's kind of pivoted over time. And so now I primarily producing content for ten and prep. And my most recent content and why I'm on this podcast is about
how we could fix a broken undergrad college system.
Gary Stocker (01:32.026)
And it's a system that certainly needs full needs fixed. As I just guys told you before we started recording, I just finished recording this week's episode of of the College Financial Health Show. And I said many times during that one, as I do often, that this is an industry in decline. and let's still start talking about the training piece. So to do that though, Michael, from your perspective, what's what's the purpose of college?
Michael Hromadka (01:56.461)
Yeah, so before I answer that, I do sort of want to set some general parameters on the answer. So, you know, in the higher ed landscape, we have community colleges, undergrad programs at four-year universities, graduate school. So when you ask me what's the purpose of college, I'm gonna just answer that as what is the purpose of undergrad?
Gary Stocker (02:02.716)
Sure.
Michael Hromadka (02:21.45)
And I'm gonna give you a radical answer that I think is not radical at all because it's really common sense. It is to prepare you for an entry-level job. And really, that preparation is for an entry-level job tied to your major or your concentration of study. But yeah, it's not for anything else. It's not for you know searching for some sacred wisdom, it's not for growing and maturing.
Gary Stocker (02:32.154)
Interesting.
Gary Stocker (02:37.137)
Right.
Michael Hromadka (02:49.792)
It's not to root for your favorite sports team, even though I'm a huge sports team, especially from where I went. It is none of those things. If you are attending undergrad and paying money for it, the goal and mission for you in the college should be to prepare you for an entry-level job.
Gary Stocker (03:05.564)
And Michael, you're not the first one to say this. In in discussions before you and I scheduled and started recording this podcast episode, you you suggest that college is risky. Why is that?
Michael Hromadka (03:18.818)
Yeah, so I mean the risk is financial and time-based, right? So obvious answers here, college costs a lot of money, takes a lot of time. Undergrads specifically in the current system, if you do it, you know, the typical amount of time would be four years, even though some people take longer. So the risk is that you spend all that time and money and you don't get a decent entry-level job tied to what you just spent all that time and money on.
Right. And then to be even more specific, choosing a major is risky. Right. If we too often think about majors as some choice made by the prospective student, where really we should actually shift our thinking and realize your major is just a credential that an employer is requiring for a certain entry-level job, right?
So when you read a job description for a job that you might want, there will be a section on requirements and it will probably list a major or certificates or some level of education that's required. So going back to the risky part of this, if you end up majoring something, majoring in something, or going to a college for something and can't get a job in it, or you could get a job in it, but it's not jobs that you wanted or not what you expected, that's incredibly risky.
Gary Stocker (04:43.154)
So of course at college viability our focus is on the financial piece. And while we're talking about college being risky, from your perspective, not mine, but from your perspective, what's the risk what's the risk of going to college a college is financially challenged, I guess is the way I want to ask that.
Michael Hromadka (04:59.468)
Yeah. So when I talked to you originally, you used a metaphor that I thought was awesome for what you do. You're like, hey, I create I as in Gary, you create financial viability reports for colleges. So if like students or parents were looking at a particular college, you want to make sure that that college is gonna exist in four years. Because if they don't, holy cow, what a risk and waste that was, right? And the the metaphor or the analogy you gave me was like, look, the
probably most expensive thing that someone buys is a home. And in part of the due diligence process for buying a home, you hire a home inspector who gives you a report that says this is everything that I can see that maybe is wrong with the home. Well, the second most expensive thing people spend money on is education, right? So, you know, going back to kind of the very first discussion that you and I had, when I say college is risky, a lot of times I'm harping on the fact that the risk is tied to
Gary Stocker (05:39.09)
Yeah.
Michael Hromadka (05:59.085)
bad employment outcomes or just the tremendous cost and time associated with bad employment outcomes. Let me tell you the flip side of the risk, which is what you do, you don't want to go to a college that isn't going to have enough money to exist while you are currently attending that college. So that is also another risk.
Gary Stocker (06:17.586)
And I guess there's there's nothing in life, and you and I know this, and everybody listening to the podcast knows this, there's no risk-free scenario in anything that we do. You know, a mountain rock could be crash come crashing down into my home here in Colorado Springs and end our podcast prematurely. Not likely, but it's you know, it's it's it's a risk. And so how again, from your perspective, how do you lower or I guess just lower the risk of that decision to go to college?
Michael Hromadka (06:46.582)
Yeah. So I actually have you you mentioned in an introduction. I've got a YouTube channel called Ten and Prep, and I've got like fifty-one videos on fixing a broken college system. And I kind of go through all the problems that I see with undergrad and then solutions here. So I actually think the very first thing anyone can do is just have a risk-based discussion, right, about college. So just being aware that it's not
You know, an investment that's guaranteed to pay off, you could lose money, you could not get a good job, and you could look at the risks in a bunch of different ways. I remember when you and I were talking last time, you know, I would struggle with telling a young person or someone of any age looking to go to undergrad to go to a small private school in a rural place. You know, at that point, you don't have a huge alumni network.
That could like help you network to get jobs. You're not in a city where jobs are, so it would be tougher to actually, you know, apply to jobs, network while you're in the city. And there's it'd be tougher to work during college. Now, there are some great schools that are in rural places that aren't big, right? But just having a risk-based discussion is a pretty good idea. I mean, I think the next thing you need to do is you need to look at the employment statistics for every college.
Colleges do post employment statistics. So there's things called like first destination surveys. There's some other websites like the Department of Education, Scorecard. I will tell you, and I have a YouTube video about this. I actually think the data on all these sources is not good and incomplete, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't look at it. You should, right? That helps you make a risk-informed decision. And then on the financial viability side, it's what you do, right? Like if you're a parent or a student.
And you are looking at a smaller college or maybe a college that doesn't have the financial resources of a larger state school or an established prestigious like Ivy League school, I would probably get a financial viability report as part of the risk-based decision-making process.
Gary Stocker (08:55.47)
And I would recommend that a lot recommend that also. Well let's let's jump ahead a little bit to more of what you do. And and career preparation is something you and I've talked about before. And from your perspective again at tenant prep, how can colleges improve career preparation in the twenty first century?
Michael Hromadka (09:02.456)
Yeah.
Michael Hromadka (09:14.188)
Yeah, so I get really fired up about this. you know, I I spend a lot of time in higher ed. I have an undergrad degree, I've got, you know, two graduate degrees. Honestly, my biggest gripe probably about higher ed is the teachers of the classes and the subject matters of the classes don't go back to what I believe the mission is, which is work preparation for entry-level jobs. So your question to me was, how do they do that? So
In my YouTube videos, I cover a bunch of different ways. I will tell you the first way they do that is for every single class syllabus. That class syllabus should link to real job descriptions from real companies that are no more than 12 months old, the job descriptions. And it should show you how the content taught in that class is literally tied to responsibilities listed in the job description for a real job.
Gary Stocker (09:59.354)
Interesting.
Gary Stocker (10:03.174)
Yeah.
Michael Hromadka (10:12.91)
Tying onto that concept, I would have alumni, recent alumni, who are in entry-level jobs, like three years removed from graduating college, also sign off on the syllabus and say, yes, what is being taught here on these different days is 100% something that we use in our day-to-day entry-level job. And I mean, honestly, the last thing I would do too, and I don't think college professors would ever want to hear this, but
You know, I really do firmly believe that there should probably be more adjuncts teaching classes in majors, and the adjuncts should be teaching classes that are named after entry-level jobs in that major. So let me give you an example. If someone is majoring in finance, you could have different entry-level jobs out of college. You could be a banker, or maybe you're a credit analyst at a bank.
Gary Stocker (10:57.862)
Yeah.
Michael Hromadka (11:09.27)
You could be an analyst at a real estate finance company. You could be an associate working in the FPNA department, which is the which is a group within a finance department at a company. I would teach three different classes in that major. They would literally be called credit analyst, real estate analyst, FPNA analyst. And all you would do in that class is one or two projects that are exactly what entry-level people in those jobs do.
Gary Stocker (11:29.734)
Yeah.
Michael Hromadka (11:37.664)
And the people teaching those classes should be adjuncts who are actually doing that work. Or maybe their managers either would be fine. But moral of story is the teachers who are really trainers should actually be doing that stuff in real life.
Gary Stocker (11:54.066)
And you and I both know as we sit here talking about this in the summer of twenty twenty six that there are probably not many full time, even tenured or not, college faculty who can teach credit anal credit analyst course or the other courses that you referenced, 'cause they don't have the skills. They understand the theory, they understand the background, but they under don't understand the day to day job. That's that's an interesting perception. be fascinating to see how colleges react to that at some point.
Let me ask you about Sure.
Michael Hromadka (12:24.332)
Okay, so let I do want to kind of jump on that a little bit. So I I said at the beginning that like really I'm just focusing on what I would say undergraduate college. And when I say the mission of that is to prepare you for a career for an entry-level job, okay, that's how I feel. You can make an argument that universities have other purposes, goals, missions outside of that, not just for undergrad. And one of those things is research. So you just said something.
That I 100% agree with, and I'm gonna kind of phrase it differently. I don't think PhDs should be teaching undergrad career training classes because I don't think they have the skills to do that. However, I'm not saying that universities also I'm not saying that universities don't also have a research mission. Sure, they do, and I think that research is valuable.
Gary Stocker (13:03.817)
Ha ha ha
Michael Hromadka (13:19.744)
And PhDs or people who have hyper-specialized in some knowledge area, maybe they are the right ones to do that research. But I think the what the change would be separating those two things. Because once again, and I agree with what you just said, I don't think the PhDs need to be teaching the undergrad career training classes to help undergrad students get entry-level jobs.
Gary Stocker (13:32.336)
Yeah.
Gary Stocker (13:45.906)
You know one of the things I've been reading about, it's been in the literature and in the media quite a bit in higher education, is expense and expense for the students. And in particular, there's been some recent articles about a three-year college. Ohio and West Virginia, I think, are coming together to try and create a model for a three-year bachelor's degree. I think I had this on my podcast yesterday, on this week, the regular edition of this week. And right away, faculty associations said, Well, no, you can't have a ninety credit college degree because they will
Those students will not learn all the basic skill sets necessary. But Michael, when you talk about college is too expensive, is that part of what you're thinking about?
Michael Hromadka (14:24.206)
I know this is audio only podcast, but just to visually describe how I reacted while you were talking, I'm shaking my head. I need to, I almost wanted to act like I was like banging my head on the desk. So, okay, here's the deal about arbitrary credit hour requirements for a degree. They're arbitrary. How about this? The only metric that matters for learning outcomes is learning outcomes.
Gary Stocker (14:29.85)
I saw that. I saw that.
Michael Hromadka (14:53.526)
So if you can teach a finance major the fundamentals of finance and then give them entry-level career training and how to be a credit analyst, real estate analyst, or an FPA analyst, and you can do that in two years as long as you've actually taught them, great. Why are we making up some random years?
requirement or credit hours requirement, right? The only thing that matters is did you actually effectively teach something and the students were able to put it into practice? So yeah, I mean, some common sense changes I argue for in my YouTube videos. Number one, I don't understand why undergrad's not year-round, right? So if you think about it, one of the reasons college is so expensive in terms of financial cost and time is just this random four years. Like the literally there's
Gary Stocker (15:15.267)
Interesting.
Michael Hromadka (15:44.129)
It shouldn't be four years. Okay. So one way you could actually speed up the time of college and reduce the cost, make it year-round. The current semester-based system, a semester is about 15 weeks long, right? So two semesters in a year, that's only 30 weeks. There are 52 weeks in a year. So college is essentially right now a little more than half of the year, right? If you literally go to a year-round trimester-based system, you go from
30 weeks a year to 45 weeks, and you'd still have six, seven weeks for vacation, but you you could keep the same number of credit hours. And if you moved year round, now you're graduating college in a little over two and a half years. But I I do want to repeat here though, I'm not saying you need 120 credit hours to graduate, because once again, that is not based in learning outcomes. That is just a made-up number that has traditionally been followed.
Gary Stocker (16:28.519)
Right, right.
Gary Stocker (16:37.36)
Yeah, and I I, you know, through all the media that I do, both my own and with others, as is it's fair to say that I'm not a fan of college faculty. Matter of fact, when I was talking about this three year bachelor's degree yesterday, I teasingly speculated that if we went to a twelve month college calendar, like you're talking about, that the college faculty, professional associations and individual faculty would say, No, we have to work too hard. We could never do that.
And I think I use that same whiny voice when I did the podcast yesterday talking about that. And that's probably right. faculty are are a big part of the challenge of getting higher education to move forward. And and I guess well what you're talking about here is not radical change, although some folks may describe it at that. It's market driven changes. And before before I go in, that's a fair fair assumption, right? What you're talking about is not radical. It's market driven.
Michael Hromadka (17:27.384)
Sure, I mean we know what's funny is to you and me, it's not radical. It's common sense, and sure you could say market driven or economically rational, but what's wild is none of this stuff has been implemented. So clearly it is radical to some people, and just not us.
Gary Stocker (17:50.012)
So you sent me some notes and you gave me some some ideas, some some some input on what some of these changes could be. I don't wanna go through all of them, but I'm gonna pick a couple. And let's first one. You suggest that everyone should take the same freshman classes regardless of major or program.
Michael Hromadka (18:07.98)
Yeah, so this would be very different than how it currently set up. So, okay. I have a whole YouTube video that outlines the 15 classes, but as a general overview, I would like all freshman students or first-year students to take the exact same 15 classes. And the reason it's 15 classes, it's because I've got a year-round trimester-based model, right? So essentially the 15 classes can be grouped into different subject matter.
Gary Stocker (18:10.811)
Yeah.
Michael Hromadka (18:37.346)
The first is I propose like four or five classes on colleges helping you pick a major. Because, like I said earlier in the podcast, that's probably the riskiest thing you do in college because your major is a signal to employers of what jobs you can do. So picking a major will limit you in the future on what jobs you can do, on where you can do those jobs, on how much money you could potentially make.
So in my first year curriculum, I've got four or five classes where they start out with major exploration, then I force the colleges to walk you through employment data for graduates with graduates with those majors. We also do some sort of like job and industry overview. And then it ends with a sort of a chart in your course, which is essentially marrying that major to a job search and career plan. So that's like a third of the first year curriculum.
next third of the first year curriculum, it's really personal finance, personal law, and critical communication classes. Going back to what I'm hammering on the purpose of undergrad, it is to prepare you for work. And all of those classes prepare you for work or to be a better worker.
And then the last few classes are basically a general overview of business, project management, things like that. Because it doesn't matter what you do or where you do it, those concepts will apply. And something I say at the end of my YouTube video when I just discuss these 15 classes is you might actually come out of that first year and have discovered that college isn't for you. What you want to study.
Maybe is not a major at the college, or maybe the best route to become the job you have now find you want to target is in college, right? It could be a certificate program, it could be community college, right? Which is a different type of college. So you could leave at the end of the first year, but you wouldn't have wasted a year of tuition because everything you did during that first year helped you. And
Gary Stocker (20:31.388)
Yeah.
Gary Stocker (20:41.882)
Interesting. Interesting.
Michael Hromadka (20:45.216)
And not only that, everybody was in the same boat together, learning together. Like we have a really weird problem with college where I think we almost got specialization runaway, where it's like colleges are just like, let's create unique programs, majors, classes for everything. That's one of the reasons you got costs out of control. And that's also not the best delivery, I think, of education.
Gary Stocker (21:06.46)
Yeah. Well
And and you mentioned one other change you would like to see. And you say classes, major classes, classes in the major, should be taught in cohorts. Michael, are you nuts?
Michael Hromadka (21:19.278)
okay, so I have a law degree, and this is actually how the first year of law school is taught everywhere, unless something has changed in the 10 years since I graduated. But yeah, a cohort just means everybody who's studying the same thing as you takes the same classes at the same times together. So let's go back to my finance major example. at the beginning of year two, and what I'm proposing. So everybody takes the first same class as the first year of college, freshman year college.
Second year of college, they immediately go into their major coursework. No Gen Ed classes, none of that. So on the first day of the second year of college, all the students in their majors like finance will take the same classes at the same time and learn together and build relationships that in theory could help them in future job searches together and work through projects together.
Gary Stocker (22:10.436)
And and then the last change that I want to go over here is and we're gonna have college faculty throwing stuff at their computer screen or speaker or something like that when I suggest when I read this one off. Michael, you say classes should be taught one at a time, not five at a time. Boy, I can just I can just hear the outrage coming from it.
Michael Hromadka (22:26.518)
Yeah, okay.
Okay, so I mean, I know of at least one college that does this, Colorado College in Colorado Springs. so yeah, this makes a ton of sense to me for a few reasons. And I'm gonna give you a reason faculty should actually like it instead of complain it. Okay. The first reason is that I actually have a pretty firmly held belief that college students should work part-time during college.
Gary Stocker (22:33.744)
Yeah.
Michael Hromadka (22:54.858)
I talk about that. I have actually several YouTube videos about it, but moral of story is it it will help in several ways, right? Number one, it does help them for the their career-based workforce when they're out of school, if they're working during school, right? They're learning new things, they're applying soft skills, even if the jobs aren't related, right? Like you might say, How does Chick-fil-A relate to me working in the finance department of a company? It does. It does because you will learn things at any job that will help you in any other job.
so the question becomes like how do we get students working, you know, part-time when they're in school? I think we need to change all of the classes and the class schedule to make it easier and less stressful. That's one of the reasons I want one class at a time. It has never made sense to me.
That we have five different classes to concentrate on with five different professors who are acting like they're five different CEOs and not coordinating tests or homework. That makes it really hard to be able to do things outside of school. It's also not how the workplace is. So I work at a big company. I have one boss. I don't have five bosses. I have one boss. Now
I'm I'm in a hierarchical org chart, so yeah, sure, in theory my boss's boss is my boss, but I'm not talking to that person very much. The person giving me assignments day to day is one person. Why do we have five professors n who don't coordinate like they should, all giving work at one time? So
That to me is common sense. Now let me tell you why professors shouldn't whine about it. I think, I think something that professors complain about is they'll say, these students aren't as engaged as they should be, or they don't do their homework, or they're not participating in class. You know, that's pretty easy to blame students and say, they don't care enough, when in reality it could be because it's just really hard to balance that whole workload, right?
Gary Stocker (24:27.74)
Yeah.
Michael Hromadka (24:47.818)
If students only had to focus on one professor at a time and that professor was the center of attention, they might like that and actually see more interaction with their students.
Gary Stocker (24:57.424)
Interesting. Interesting. Well, final question. And and Michael, we're gonna go to the mountaintop, just like Moses did all those centuries ago. And and and the entire higher education world is listening to you and they will do the one thing, Michael. What's the one thing, the top thing that has to change for higher education to be more successful for its students in the coming years? Just one. I ask this to everybody.
Michael Hromadka (25:23.35)
Mm-hmm.
Gary Stocker (25:28.742)
Don't worry about the delay 'cause I'll edit that out.
Michael Hromadka (25:38.102)
I mean, for me, it's all about better, more transparent, more detailed employment data. The schools must provide it, and the students must hold them accountable. And if the data is bad for a major or for a college,
Then that major or college shouldn't be supported, shouldn't get money, shouldn't get students. But right now, the employment data isn't as good as it should be, and we're probably not holding the schools, the faculty, the administrators, or the programs as accountable as we should. But we should, we should.
Gary Stocker (26:23.602)
Well my guest has been Michael Ramatka, who is the founder of Tenon Prep. Let me spell that for you. It's T-E-N-O-N-P-R-E-P, and that's a dot com site. And there's also a Ten and Prep YouTube channel. Michael, thanks for making time to join me this afternoon.
Michael Hromadka (26:37.73)
Thank you so much, Gary. I had a great time.
Gary Stocker (26:39.698)
I'm Grace Docker with College Viability. We'll be back next week with another episode of this week in College Viability.