Our Entrepreneur Owner-Manager podcast interview this month is with Paul LeBlanc, President and CEO of Southern New Hampshire University. Most would say that SNHU is one of the largest, not-for-profit online organizations and the most innovative university in the world. Most listeners of PEV have seen some of their highly effective marketing or advertising.
As the costs of higher education have increased and students are increasingly stressed to afford a college degree, the field is going through great turmoil and many informed observers would predict that we will see more failures of private, not-for-profit colleges and universities in the next twenty years than we could imagine.
Amidst this changing ecosystem, SNHU stands out as an extraordinarily successful player, offering value-based higher education through its three primary channels: an online university with about 100,000 students, its residential college with about 3,000 students, and its competency-based channel called Workforce Solutions where it has disintermediated credit hours from the diploma for working adult students.
Is it luck? Or is there something more than luck at work here? Paul LeBlanc is the President that has been the motivational force behind this incredible track record. Today he speaks with me about his background, his family roots, some of the pluses and minuses about having such a high profile in his field, and what lies in his future.
In the interest of transparent disclosure, I am a six-plus year member of SNHU’s governing board called its Board of Trustees.
Produced and edited by Mari Lister.