The Flexible Platform Reimagining College and Career Readiness
My friend George Pernsteiner, who served as president of the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) from September 2013 until August 2017, after serving nine years as chancellor of the seven-campus Oregon University System, introduced me to FolderWave several years ago, as he was intrigued with the work they were doing in the college and career readiness space—but with a solution that could scale across different settings and life stages. Today I bring you an interview with Bob Burke, Folderwave’s president and cofounder.
Michael Horn: What’s the origin story for how you all started FolderWave? What was the opportunity you saw that wasn’t being met?
Bob Burke: FolderWave began 25 years ago. At the time, admissions and financial aid processes were very paper intensive and very siloed. Information wasn’t easily shared with the many parts of an organization involved in making decisions about financial aid awards, for example. An opportunity arose to partner with a local private university to create a platform that was adaptable, as rules changed all the time; hosted off campus so their technology department didn’t have another product to worry about; and encompassed services (like document handling) at scale that would digitally enable sharing of information easily.
FolderWave built the platform to focus on case management type processes: collect data, drive work processes, facilitate information visibility and enable quick decision making. Our platform grew and expanded features like online forms and integration points, and this platform is still the basis for our work today with our clients. Our flexible platform approach significantly reduces implementation cost and timetable and facilitates maintenance and updates and, most importantly, gave us the flexibility and technology to enable the company to evolve as the industry does.
We moved from enrollment processes specifically for colleges and universities to make the admissions and financial aid processes easier for staff and students, to leveraging our platform to enable efficiency in large organizations with our white-labeled “powered by” services. We still do all that for clients but now are tailoring the platform to focus attention on the College and Career Readiness market to support students in their journey to college or directly to a career, which clearly is gaining momentum.
From all of this, and given the ever-increasing trials and tribulations, or perhaps “opportunities” for the positive spin, in education, we realized that only a new flexible, expandable system with a total student focus could seamlessly guide, evaluate, and support students at all stages of learning from the youngest through adult learner.
Michael: How do you think about the capabilities you’ve built and the value proposition you provide? What differentiates what you offer?
Bob: Michael, that is a great question. Usually, we are asked who we are, not what we are. I’ll start with the problems we solve. Many organizations require branded and tailored solutions to drive key initiatives in their business but have to choose between custom built and maintained products, which are very expensive, or cookie-cutter solutions that require the organization to live with what they provide. Our platform we created allows us to deliver on both. A scalable platform, but we can use it internally to create and “productize” solutions. Our goal is not to be a one-off company, but to leverage the work we do across all our clients to keep advancing the platform. Always laser focused on student success, but, if needed, our platform could do other things as well.
In a nutshell, FolderWave is a technology-focused company that leverages a comprehensive platform created by our experienced staff, to easily craft and configure scalable solutions targeted at helping students directly or helping organizations that help students, to simplify processes for students and educators.
We offer our clients value by providing expertise in the education enterprise, tailoring solutions for those not looking for just another cookie-cutter product. We know how to execute large scale deployments and programs, and because we have combined services with our product, we do a lot for them. We take the “partner” approach to the next level by almost becoming part of the organizations we serve. And, of course, there are often very tangible ROI’s, such as from automating tasks for efficiency and savings.
Michael: You’re known for serving students in schools with college and career planning, as you said, but it seems based on the underlying infrastructure, you could also support individuals in other settings—homeschoolers, adults trying to explore alternative careers, or going back to school to get them unstuck. Are you expanding your go-to-market strategies? Are the problems significantly different for individuals in different settings or stages of life?
Bob: Thanks, Michael. We understood that at all stages of learning there is a universal set of simple questions and issues (that usually don’t have simple answers): who are you, what are you good at, what have you done, what would you like to do, and how do you evaluate and prepare for your options.
Our launch into the career readiness space focused on the K-12 market initially, most specifically on middle and high school students. The driver here was to focus our initial work on helping students, and educators, follow their states’ 6-year career plan, which outlines steps and activities taken at each grade to help students make more informed decisions. Having a comprehensive set of capabilities in one platform avoids the need for students to have to research multiple resources.
In our platform, they have tools from resume building to researching potential job growth opportunities 10 years into the future. Connecting all these features give a comprehensive plan they can follow, or change, as their interests, skills and values adapt over time, or as the job market and new paths arise. We have recently incorporated work-based learning tools into the platform. The ability for students to explore opportunities, job potentials, what they like and what they don’t in a real-time work, internship, seminar or many other WBL type approaches, brings a whole new arena where students can engage. Connecting employers into the platform, as well, provides the ability for them to evaluate and provide feedback to students on their performance. We are very excited about the growth potential of this and the impact it can have on students. This platform is currently deployed to several hundred schools and supports 50,000 students annually as they navigate their journey.
But the broader value we see is continuing the view that learners never stop learning or gaining experience by shaping the current context of what they want to do. So, we have focused some attention on tailoring our solution to the homeschool market to support students who typically don’t have college or career counselors. And our vision is to move into the adult-learner marketplace—from the support of students in the community college and four-year space to those who have already launched careers and want to explore other paths. While experimentation with jobs always provides valuable experience, it tends to be expensive for both the learner and the employer. Having a tool that may help them better align with their choices would eliminate some of the overhead of job testing. We also feel that those that have access to our tool at a younger age should have it for life. Seeing historical choices may help provide vision for next steps.
Yes, the challenges are different at various stages. At the younger age group, students don’t really have context for jobs. That could be 15 years away. So, we try to gamify some of their experience with our system so they begin to learn what people actually do in a job. We don’t expect them to know what they want to do as the jobs in the future could be very different, but exploring provides a basis for better adapting to that change later. At this level, it’s very important to surround the student with supporting educators and family- and community-based organizations that can motivate and encourage exploration toward a bright and successful future. Enabling all those folks to participate through technology is something we do. As you move to the adult-learner space, they come with experience, some good and some bad, in jobs, roles, and positions they have already had. They are looking to leverage that to make decisions about next steps. So, the challenge is to understand what that experience is, what motivates the learner, where do they want to go, and what are their current circumstances as they prepare for their next steps. It hasn’t gone unnoticed, Michael, that you are involved with a product that aligns with some of that thinking. Perhaps there is a collaboration to consider!
Michael: We’ll have to talk! What other exciting partnerships do you have to serve individuals in some of these other settings?
Bob: We have a lot of technology partners (Common App, Petersons, Clever and more), but the ones we are very focused on are our partnership with College Board supporting some significant financial aid capability they provide, and our more recent work in our student success focus initiatives, with the National Guard Youth Challenge and Job Challenge programs in Idaho, Virginia, and elsewhere. This is one where [the National Guard] support at-risk youth ages 16–18 to get on a good path toward success including career planning. This is a program in many states and is very successful in the outcomes of the youth they serve. We are very proud to provide our platform.
We provide more of an enrollment-type solution to them today that helps them identify student candidates, evaluate them, enroll them into the program, and then track their progress during a residential phase of the program. We provide ways to track that each student is completing tasks and achieving goals set out by the program. Then there is a second phase, which is post-residential where they take the skills they learn and look to achieve academic and career success. We provide the tools for them to track this as well—ultimately leading to the data reporting each location does back to a central location for national reporting. Some students may choose a path in the National Guard, but they may choose career paths outside the National Guard. There is no requirement or commitment to my knowledge. Our goal is advance adoption to other locations, and to introduce our career navigation tools into this program in the future.
Michael: With the interest in helping students thinking about careers much earlier and moving away from the college-for-all narrative without falling back into the tracking that existed several decades ago around “voc tech,” as well as the focus on different pathways into well-paying jobs, it seems there’s been an explosion of tools and companies focused on this life navigation space, if you will. How do you think about FolderWave’s differentiation?
Bob: Michael, we agree, earlier exposure for students to explore and evaluate what they may not be aware of, provides so much more runway for students to navigate. Personally, my experience was that I went to college too early. I was on the younger side, really only picked a major because it aligned with what my dad did, and college was complicated. I ended up getting a summer job, that turned into a full-time job, and I finished college by going at night. Having real job experience made the learning infinitely easier given the context of some application of the subject. So, I might fall into the category of “college-later.” There are so many factors that will drive a student (and their family) one way or another. The goal is always to find the best path, one that aligns with you and your circumstance which could be financial, could be social, could be interest, could be values.
I go back to an earlier point. I think the comprehensive nature of the platform and the different components we bring to the table, the ability to evolve the platform and enhance with capabilities like our work-based learning components, allows a 360-degree view of things you can and should explore. We aren’t college only, or vocation only, or career only. We provide it all and can help at the many levels of need (younger to older). Maybe vocation is your path, maybe credentials and certification get you where you need. The path should be yours to own and explore. We have several integrations into our platform that enable features, so we are always exited to explore more and work with vendors that have focused solutions in an area.
Michael: What’s next on the horizon for you all that you’re excited about?
Bob: Too many ideas to list them all but our key focus areas include expanding into adult learner opportunities, and of course, expanding our use of AI in the right way to provide that 360-view I mentioned in a way that helps users get to path options quicker with deeper information.