We communicate with all of our people, and in addition we watch them stumble from the many hurdles of antique college or university program, plus it brought about me to ask issue

Ruben Ogbonna:
They’re going to colleges that have graduation rates that are in the 20s, in the 30s, that have average starting salaries for their graduates at $30,000 per year, $40,000 per year in a city like New York. And so for so many reasons, unrelated to how hardworking, talented, or how much potential they have, I saw students who would fail to reach their potential through this system that we told them was their answer to every problem that they had, and it was so frustrating.

I communicate with all of our people, therefore we watch her or him stumble from the many hurdles of your own traditional university program, and it also caused us to ask the question

Ruben Ogbonna:
.. I say, us, me and my co-founder, Maya, asked the question of, what could a different post-secondary school experience look like for these students?

Todd Zipper:
Yes. That’s exactly what you’re creating here. So couple questions, as you unpack what the Marcy Lab School… First, where’d you come up with the name? It’s a creative name.

We correspond with the pupils, therefore we watch him or her stumble from of a lot roadblocks of one’s conventional college or university system, also it brought about me to query practical question

Ruben Ogbonna:
Oh yeah. My wife and I were living on Marcy Avenue at that time, and one of my favorite rappers, Jay-Z, was raised here, on Marcy Avenue. I think it’s just a historic street in Brooklyn. For so many people pay day loans Montana, Jay-Z represents a dream realized, and I think to pay how much to that name is something that we wanted to do. That word lab is reflective of the way that we see our work. We see this as one big experiment. Every year, we’re testing a set of hypotheses in service of the greater mission of creating a more equitable, accessible post-secondary education option for students who’ve been locked out of traditional higher education.

Todd Zipper:
Excellent. So I’ve read on your website… I love this quote here, which is, “The Marcy Lab School democratizes the path to six figure income in tech for Black and Brown students.” So that pretty much says what your mission is right there. Could you unpack a little bit about what this alternative type of school is? We know what the four-year degree looks like, although that’s starting to look different as the non-traditional student or what we’re now calling the new majority student is. In some cases, you’re so that student, although in many levels, those are people that are well above the traditional 18-year-old student, which I think you’re focusing on right now. We know the two-year associates degree path. How are you different from that? Can you just help us understand this?

We talk to our very own students, and now we watch him or her stumble through the many roadblocks of one’s old-fashioned university system, also it brought about me to ask practical question

Ruben Ogbonna:
Yeah. Let me give you a high level overview of what it is that we’re doing, and maybe creep into to why we’ve decided to structure things this way. We are a one-year post-secondary school, an alternative to college, and we’re serving students who otherwise would be attending four-year, potentially two-year colleges. They would likely be attending lesser selective four-year and two-year institutions, students who would not necessarily have the high school backgrounds that would indicate that they would attend a college like NYU or Columbia, but they’re smart, talented, hardworking students, nonetheless.

We talk to the people, therefore we view them stumble through the of numerous roadblocks of traditional college or university program, and it brought about me to ask practical question

Ruben Ogbonna:
In fact, they, in our opinion, are the students who fully embody what it means to be a college student in this country. Oftentimes, we use the words, untapped middle. When you think of any high school senior class, you can think of those students in that upper quartile. They’re going to gain admissions to the types of schools and have endowments that allow them to meet the needs of all the students that they serve. They have the career readiness programs, they have the extracurricular programs that make a well-rounded and excellent college experience.