Turning Jobs into Degrees: How Work Based Learning Is Transforming Higher Education is the U.S.

What if a university degree did not require stepping away from work, taking on significant debt, or leaving one’s community? What if the workplace itself became the campus? Joe Ross, President of Reach University, joins us to share his insight. This episode explores a different model of higher education that seeks to turn jobs into degrees rather than degrees into jobs. The approach centres on apprenticeship degrees, where learners earn an accredited university qualification while working full time. Half of the learning takes place on the job, while the other half occurs through structured academic instruction designed specifically for working adults. The result is a pathway that combines higher education, workforce development, and economic mobility. At the heart of the model is a simple framework described as the “A, B, C” of apprenticeship degrees. A stands for affordability. Programmes are intentionally designed so that learners do not accumulate student debt. Participants contribute a modest amount, but the cost is kept low enough that it does not become a barrier. B stands for being based in the workplace. Learners begin with a paid job and remain employed throughout their studies. The workplace becomes the learning environment, with colleagues functioning as classmates and mentors. C stands for credit for learning at work. On the job experience, mentorship, observation, and practical tasks form part of the academic journey and translate directly into university credit. Despite the strong workplace component, the degrees themselves remain academic. Students earn traditional qualifications such as a Bachelor of Arts or Associate of Arts. The curriculum integrates liberal arts thinking with practical experience, encouraging critical reasoning, creativity, and intellectual curiosity within the context of real work. This approach challenges the idea that vocational learning and higher education must exist separately. Instead, it combines both. Early adoption has focused on fields facing severe workforce shortages. In education, for example, many schools struggle to recruit qualified teachers. At the same time, schools employ large numbers of support staff who know their communities well but lack the degrees required to advance. By transforming their current roles into a pathway to a degree, classroom aides, library staff, or after school programme workers can train to become fully qualified teachers without leaving their jobs or communities. The same logic is now emerging in healthcare. Patient care assistants can progress step by step into roles such as certified nursing assistants, registered nurses, and beyond. The model enables employers to build talent from within while offering employees a clear route to professional careers. The outcomes are promising. Many graduates move directly into the roles they trained for, with a large share seeing their salaries double or even triple. Completion rates also exceed typical national averages for learners from similar economic backgrounds. Beyond individual success stories, the ambition is broader. If workplaces become learning environments and degrees can be earned through employment, every community could effectively host its own pathway to higher education. Finally, the discussion touches on the future of education in an age shaped by artificial intelligence. Rather than making higher education obsolete, the argument here is that AI increases the importance of human capabilities such as critical thinking, creativity, and judgement. Those qualities, long associated with the liberal arts, remain essential. If the challenge of the future is learning how humans and intelligent machines work together, then education that develops adaptable, thoughtful, and creative people may matter more than ever. This episode offers a glimpse of a higher education model that seeks to expand opportunity, strengthen local workforces, and make the pursuit of a degree possible for people who might otherwise never have the chance. Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 350+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.