Chuck Trafton - President of edly - Leveling the Playing Field with ISAs

It's time to tell the story of how ISAs level the playing field for students.

On the 8th episode of the Skill Podcast, Micah shares a conversation with Chuck Trafton, Co-Founder and President of edly - The ISA Marketplace. edly connects accredited investors to skill academies, coding bootcamps, and colleges that are providing ISAs to students for financing their educational goals.

Chuck and Micah discuss the ISA landscape in depth, and uncover the fact that ISAs are not only an innovation in student financing, but a vehicle to enable untapped student groups to access educational opportunities, even if they don't have strong credit histories or wealthy parents.

Throughout this conversation, Chuck and Micah cover the following topics:

• Chuck's first job in higher ed and his transition to a higher ed investor
• The difference between the student debt crisis and new forms of education
• The importance of skin in the game
• The macro-economics of student loans and higher education that will shock you
• The ISA landscape and the two major demographics of ISAs
• Why bootcamps have been the early ISA adopters
• Do ISAs lead to adverse selection?
• Are students choosing new majors because of the salary data available to them?
• How schools maintain their skin in the game
• How ISAs level the playing field
• Holberton School's amazing example of serving
• The ugly history of for-profit education in the U.S.
• Why does a bachelor's degree still take 4 years?
• The parallel between online education 10 years ago and ISAs today
• A fresh update on the pending legislation in Congress to regulate ISAs
• The future of ISAs and the missing entrepreneurs in the ecosystem

Organizations mentioned on this podcast:

• edly
• Holberton School
• Make School
• Lambda School
• Purdue University
• Noodle Partners

You can connect with Chuck about his work at edly on Twitter @chucktrafton OR at www.edly.info

You can connect with Micah to share your thoughts about the Rethink Education Podcast at micah "at" meritmark.co OR on Twitter @micahmerrick

Thanks for listening!