Is College Worth It?

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Episode Transcript

About

Key takeaways from this podcast episode include a decline in confidence in traditional higher education due to rising costs and uncertain job prospects. Matt Wilkerson, CEO and Co-founder at Extern introduced externships as a solution, offering students real-world projects remotely and helping companies engage with more students efficiently. Despite the advantages of skills-based hiring, its limited prevalence is attributed to challenges in standardization. Overall, the discussion emphasizes the need for innovative solutions like externships to bridge the gap between academic preparation and workplace readiness.

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Matt Wilkerson

Matt is the Co-founder & CEO of Extern which invented the remote Externship, a new form of work experience with integrated learning. Externships let people quickly build their resumes with real work experiences remotely while giving companies expert-designed, turnkey projects that drive business outcomes.

Previously known as Paragon One, last year Extern served 8,800 multi-week Externships to students out of nearly 100,000 applications on behalf of brands like PwC, Home Depot, AT&T, HSBC, Macquarie, HP, National Geographic, Beats by Dre, Hugo Boss, and more. Extern's mission is to enable anyone from any background to access professional experience, and its vision is to enable people to build their resume while earning their degree.

It's backed by Foundation Capital, Launch Fund, Learn Capital, University Ventures, and YCombinator. Matt previously co-founded and was CFO of AHAlife, a luxury online marketplace for discovering 1,000+ designers and artisans from 45+ countries, which raised over $20M of venture capital and merged with ASX-listed Design Milk.

Before launching AHAlife, Matt sourced, executed, and oversaw consumer internet investments with Technology Crossover Ventures, a $10Bn venture capital fund. Prior to TCV, Matt began his career in the Media & Telecom Investment Banking Group at Morgan Stanley, focusing on M&A, IPO, and debt issuances for new media and telecom companies. Matt holds both a B.S. degree in Computer Science & Engineering and a B.S. in Management Science from MIT.