Good morning Pierre, thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate that we can be able
to have this conversation. So, not many people know but OpenClassrooms is important. In this
time of pandemic it's giving people not only the opportunity to survive but to thrive and they can
take the skills, education, career to the next level. So I'm happy to have Pierre Dubuc, the founder,
to discuss this important mission. So, Pierre, tell us a little bit about your unique story and
what, I don't think everybody knows about your company, especially outside of France, so it'll be
great if you can tell how you started? I think you started when you were very early, your teens,
right? So I think this is a very interesting story that people can really appreciate.
Thank you and good morning Young. It's a real pleasure to be joining you, yet remotely.
OpenClassrooms started seven years ago but on the basis of a personal project that we
initiated with my partner, his name is Mathieu, in 1999. So it's been more than 20 years actually that
we are creating online courses. And in 1999 we were extremely young because we were in middle school
and we were 13 and 11 years old and we were interested in creating websites. We couldn't find
at this time great courses online to learn html, how to create a website. So Mathieu
started to create the very first course on html on web development in French and he published
it online for free to share with some friends to help them create their own websites. And from there
I helped him grow the website, this online learning community, all for free for many many
years. Parallel to studies in middle school, in high school, in college and then it became the reference
platform to learn coding in French-speaking countries. At this stage we didn't have
a business model. It was not a company, it was just a personal website for free. But we already had
hundreds of thousands of learners every month and then at the end of our studies we decided:
Okay, maybe we're gonna make it for a full-time job and create a company. So this is
OpenClassrooms in 2013. So we created OpenClassrooms as a mission program company and the mission is to
make education accessible. And when I first met you, I was extremely impressed by what you're trying to
do, this is even before pandemic. And you start this company at a really young age and in a
time where internet and online education isn't as popular. So I would say you are one of those
pioneers. What are the challenges to see today and how are you addressing those challenges?
We've got many operational challenges actually right now, because Covid has
really accelerated the transformation from in-person education to online. As we are on
the higher education segment but also on lifelong learning and rescaling and upscaling.
So we've seen a strong acceleration and an uptake in environments, in usage, a shortening of the
cell cycle in B2B as well. And also a really strong growth of the number of rescaling programs or
job seekers because of the economic downturn. So the main challenge right now for us
is to be able to deliver more and more degree programs to students. The second one I comment
on is your ability to replicate the model in other countries, the internalization of our
model and especially when it comes to regulatory environments. Because we're a degree awarding
institution, so we're a college, a fully fledged college with a direct reputation. But degree
accreditation is something that works on a country basis. So it's only country by country
and then you have to replicate the process and the process to get a degree creation usually takes
between four to nine years in every country. So it's really long and we need to replicate this.
So this is also one of our challenges. So clearly what you're describing is a classic case of
startup to scale up operational challenges and as you're going to global footprint, global footprint
replication challenges. And these are very typical startup issues that one has to go through as you
want to permeate and share your class programs to the global basis. Now, if I remember when we met
multiple times, but I remember last time I asked you what are the key differentiators of
your program? And I just remember a couple of key things that was unique in my view. You said that,
you know, we guarantee the diploma programs when your students are in the program for job change
and being able to learn new skills, you guarantee to get a new job as they are looking for
the opportunities for change. I thought that, in fact, I think you said you reimbursed even
the tuition that they pay. I thought that was really unique and ambitious. So can you share
with us an idea about what are some of the unique things you're doing to help people to change
their careers? Sure, it's a very good question. So what we do precisely
is that we create and operate and deliver degree programs leading to tomorrow's jobs.
So we offer associate Bachelors and Master's theory programs fully online and they lead
to jobs. Jobs mostly in the tech and digital industry but also on transversal jobs. So
tech and digital would be coding, AI, cyber security, digital marketing, ad drive, project management, UX
design and other tasks. And then we've got also transversal jobs like HR or sales or management,
finance, accounting, communication etc. We cover 50 jobs in total in English and in French. We
go all the way from orientation, helping people to find out what their career could look like,
which path they're willing to take, admissions, environment, training, project based learning,
the mentorship component that I talked about. We're gonna assess your competencies, the competencies
you need to get the job and those competencies will lead you to a degree. So you're going to get
a master's degree on data science to become a data scientist and towards the end of
the program we're going to offer you individual career coaching again via video conference with
one of our career coaches to help you find a job. A good job aligned to your degree but also
potentially to help you create your own company or become an independent worker if you will.
We do guarantee you a job, meaning if you don't find a job within six months after your graduation
date, we're going to refund your tuition fees. So it's a really strong commitment for us.
It's also a way to align all social impacts to our financials and to our commercial growth, meaning if
we make revenue, we're going to deliver a strong positive social impact with the job placement. And
this is the way we actually track our social impact as a company, through the number
of job placements. The number of students we face in the workforce, either young people finding the
first job, either employees upskilling, getting a promotion, on switching careers, doing a mobility
within the same employer or job seekers getting back to the job market and finding a job again.
That's great. So here I think it'll be great if you can actually give some more background to
the audience, the size and scale that you are in. Because you're not just a small company.
You actually, what I read is over three and a half million people have taken your classes around
many countries. So if you can give your perspective of the scale and size of the program you are
running, as well as the sum of successful programs that help people to find new jobs. That may be
interesting for people to listen to. So indeed we train millions of students every month
In a hundred countries, it's mostly in Europe, in North America and in Africa,
the three main types of students that we have are young folks between 18 to 24.
Students basically, we would call them non-traditional college students, and usually those
non-traditional college students could be school dropouts or people with disabilities, or living
in a remote area, not having access to education. Then the second target is employees. So they
could be from anywhere from 25 to 50 plus. And they're looking for an internal or
external mobility, so it could be promotion, it could be scaling, it could be rescaling and getting
a new job or getting a new job also elsewhere. And then finally we have job seekers and job seekers are
also between 25 to 50 plus. They want to learn a new job in high demand and find a job as
fast as they can. And it's quite balanced on the three different categories. But then
depending on the path, because we go all the way from entry-level positions to really advanced
and senior positions, so we can train school dropouts on the first milestones of a
degree program, up to advanced AI and machine learning engineering
at the master's level, so it's all the way and the full spectrum. So we have obviously a
different audience depending on the program. And on some programs we target especially five
categories of populations for social impact. It's about the five categories of population we
think are further away from a stronger employability. So we've got job seekers, we've
got refugees, we've got people with disabilities, we've got school dropouts and we've got people
living in under privileged areas. So we're more deliberate, we're more intentional to target those
populations and find also ways to finance their tuition fee through apprenticeship programs
with employers or with charities, foundations or public authorities, financing their studies with us.
So you're actually running a really good social impact program that is inclusive.
Including a lot of people that might not have an opportunity to learn and educate and further
ahead in their careers. So that's really really happy to hear. That given I'm also very much
supporting the UN 17 sustainability goals, particularly around education and inclusiveness.
Now tell us about what are some of the universities and education programs we have today?
Because you're clearly doing something that is a different but yet very important part of
education. So tell me your candidates assessment of how is the traditional education is like today.
And do you think, given where we have the Covid 19 continue or this thing is going to change
drastically, going forward with a different kind of hybrid approach that is changing
the way we're going to educate our children or even educating our workers? A really good question. And I think it depends, the answer depends on the market first of all. In Europe it might
be different, from the United States, from Africa, from Asia etc. The first comment I'd make on this
is we tend to polarize traditional in-person education versus online. But I think actually
the strength of event platforms is not that it's online. It's more that it's focused on the
employability of our students. So we're teaching skills, competencies, we're teaching you
a new job, a job in high demand. Through projects, through one-on-one mentorship, with career coaching.
And it's more about the method, the methodology, the pedagogy that is new compared to a more
traditional four-year long bachelor laws degree with, you know, credits and general education
and lectures and you know that kind of system. I think this is actually the biggest shift.
And you can do that on campus or you can do it online. We do it online but you
can also teach this way differently in a more career-oriented way on campus. I think
most higher education institutions will have to rethink the way they teach and especially
it will force them to be more career oriented, to take care especially of the student outcomes.
How many students graduate? How many students find a job? Which type of jobs, like is that a good job
with salary? What is the average salary that they can get etc.? Are the competencies
of those graduates in line to what employers require in the local community? Those are really
important questions and it will probably force the shift to a competency-based education but also to
more online education to keep it affordable. And as you know in the United States, affordability of higher
education is a massive issue with the raise of student loans and you know the increasing
tuition fees that families have to burden with loans for many many years. So, Pierre, do you think
there is an end of a traditional educational system? And do you think it's going to change profoundly?
I don't think it's the end, I think Harvard and MIT will still be there next year and probably
in 10 years. I do think there'll be a massive shift for more B and C players in the category,
I'd say. I think Ivy league universities will have to evolve but won't disappear and
I'm sure many people will still want to have the full college experience whenever the pandemic
will be over. When you look at college students in America right now, actually the majority of
those college students are not people around 18 and early 20s. They're actually in their 30s.
30, 35 years old, you know? And they already had maybe 10 years of work experience but they don't
have a college degree and they go back to college to get this college degree and fast strike the
career. And those people don't care that much about the college experience in the sense like
the campus life. And that will force, you know, the re-engineering of the programs clearly. So
I'm not so much worried about the first category of universities, the research universities, but more
about the vocational training providers, lifelong learning, about community colleges. I think those
institutions will face challenges and will also have huge opportunities to widen their
population, their audience. Very good, so upscaling, rescaling, apprenticeship.
All these programs are helping really changing the people adapt to jobs that could be impacted
by technology, digital transformation and how do you adjust and how do you adapt and how do you
educate and how do you be able to contribute. And I think these are challenges all the corporations
think about. And I think you are really providing tools and opportunity to enable that. So thank
you very much, Pierre, for contributing to the society and making an impact! Thank you young