Rethinking Global Higher Education

My name is Elizabeth Dearborn Hughes and I am the Co-founder and CEO of Davis College and the Akilah Institute. I moved to Rwanda right after I graduated from Vanderbilt and in 2010, I started Akilah, the country’s only women’s college, because of the dearth of higher education options for women. Akilah’s high-quality, market-relevant academic model leverages technology, competency-based education, and personalized learning to put graduates on the fast track to career success. 

Feeling an immense responsibility to share our successful model with greater numbers of underserved youth, we recently launched Davis College, a global higher education institution for young women and men across Africa and Asia. Davis College has a bold vision to enroll over 100,000 students annually through our blended and online competency-based diploma, degree, and certificate programs by 2030 and provide a solution to the urgent need for accessible and affordable higher education in emerging markets.

I am committed to solving the global higher education crisis. There is a distinct lack of affordable, high-quality, market-relevant education options for millions of underserved youth that can be solved by rethinking global higher education. Through Davis College and Akilah, we will scale our online and blended competency-based diploma, degree, and certificate programs across Africa and Asia, serving youth who otherwise would not have access to educational and economic opportunities. This elevates humanity because our proven relevant, accessible, and affordable education model leads directly to workforce outcomes for graduates, thereby lifting young women and men, and by extension their families, out of poverty and on a path economic independence and more prosperous futures.

Although the number of young people enrolled in higher education is expected to reach 263 million by 2025 at current growth rates, in the poorest countries of Africa and Asia, less than one percent of low income students go to university. Across these regions, there is limited access to affordable, high-quality tertiary education, especially programs that prepare underserved youth for future careers. While Africa has over 1,500 colleges and universities, many don’t ready their students for the labor market. A 2014 survey found that over 50 percent of graduates in East Africa were “unfit for jobs,” and “lacking job market skills” according to local employers (Inter-University Council for East Africa). 

In Hong Kong, only 18 percent of form six graduates secure a Bachelor’s Degree. Forty-eight percent of students in Hong Kong’s publicly-funded degree programs come from the wealthiest 10 percent of families, and only seven percent come from families living below the poverty line. 

This project responds to the current crisis in global higher education, and at the same time, acknowledges that the COVID pandemic has fundamentally changed the landscape in which we learn and work.

Since 2010, Akilah has delivered high-quality, market-relevant education across three diplomas - Information Systems, Business Management and Entrepreneurship, and Hospitality Management and Sustainable Tourism. Together, Akilah and Davis College will now offer our higher education model to underserved young men and women across Africa and Asia.

Our approach is simple: rather than starting with the supply — youth in need of skills and employment — we start with the demand — the skills gaps in the current and future labor market — and work backwards, so that young people graduate ready to assume leadership roles. 

Our academic model is centered on competency-based education and combines a core curriculum in environmental, social, and economic sustainability with intensive leadership training, community service, public speaking, and soft skill development. Our key pillars - 21st century skills, personalized learning, innovation, ethical leadership, and sustainability - enable learners to address complex global challenges and launch meaningful careers. Every program element, from our unbundled faculty structure, which provides more direct connect points to students and helps them master competencies, to our student-centered instructional model, is designed with a focus on affordability and access to create educational and economic opportunities for those who do not have them.

Davis and Akilah enroll young men and women who have graduated from secondary school, passed their national exams, and demonstrate strong leadership potential. Of our 2,500 students and alumnae, over 50 percent come from rural areas, where the average income is approximately $2 per day; 75 percent were unemployed prior to enrolling; and 29 percent are from the lowest socioeconomic strata in Rwanda, with inconsistent access to food, shelter, and employment. Seventy-eight percent are among the first generation in their family to complete higher education.

Based on data collected over the past decade, it’s clear our approach has led to demonstrative results:

• Eighty-one percent launch their careers within six months of graduation
• Thirty-three percent have received at least one promotion in position and/or salary since graduating
• Seventy-five percent report participation in household financial decision-making
• Sixty-three percent are outperforming their peers in their workplaces, according to surveyed employers
• More than 81 percent are supporting at least one individual or family member financially

At Davis and Akilah, student voices matter. Our Student Guild, Alumnae Association, and regular focus groups allow students to engage on a variety of issues, contributing to important decision-making processes that impact student and campus life.

Underserved youth across Africa and Asia have identified accessibility, affordability, and relevancy as three challenges to pursuing higher education, with females facing additional barriers to their education and employment. 

Davis and Akilah’s online and blended competency-based programs address these challenges by offering young women and men a transformative, market-relevant education at a fraction of the cost of traditional institutions. 

Additionally, our partner, CHANCEN International, offers Income Share Agreement (ISAs) to African students with financial need, so that no students are left behind. Qualifying students can finance up to 85% of their tuition and begin repayments once they secure employment post-graduation.

Having learned about the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in college, I moved to Rwanda in 2006, days after graduating from Vanderbilt University. I met my co-founder and husband Dave Hughes in Rwanda two years later. We met countless women who desperately wanted to contribute to their country’s rebirth following the genocide and to be a part of a new Rwanda. Unfortunately, the opportunities to do so were extremely limited, with less than one percent of Rwandans enrolled in higher education, and only 30 percent of those were female. Dave and I decided to open a women’s college to empower the next generation of female leaders and entrepreneurs. Working closely with the Rwandan government and local employers, we designed an academic model aligned with the fastest growing sectors of the East African economy.

At the time, our competitive advantage was our naivete and the lack of ingrained beliefs about how education “should” be done. No bureaucracy or politics prevented us from building an academic institution obsessively focused on transformational, student-centered learning experiences that would lead to meaningful careers.

 Today, Davis College builds on the innovation that forged Akilah to extend our programs to young men and women globally.

Davis College is named in honor of my late father, Cody Fowler Davis, and my mom, Beth Davis. Though plagued by discouraging setbacks and challenges, their support for the work and mission of Akilah never wavered. In 2008, many said we were crazy, that two young and inexperienced foreigners had no business starting a women’s college in Rwanda. My parents’ reaction was the opposite. They threw themselves into making our dream a reality. As the father of four girls, Cody was deeply passionate about education for young women. Losing him unexpectedly was the hardest thing I have ever experienced.

We all grieve in different ways. The way that I’m grieving is to pour my sadness and energy into creating a legacy for my dad with the launch of Davis College. I have to believe that something beautiful and impactful can come from something so horrible. Scaling our education model to create educational and economic opportunities for young people honors his fierce commitment. I feel a tremendous responsibility to extend his legacy of empowering his daughters and countless other young people by making Davis College and Akilah a life-changing opportunity for underserved youth in Africa and Asia

Over the past decade, we have implemented a number of critical innovations. We created accredited diploma and certificate programs in business, entrepreneurship, hospitality, tourism management, information systems, cyber security, and project management. We built a tech platform to match graduates with careers, designed blended and online learning models with proprietary curriculum, forged a strong, Africa-based academic leadership team and launched a professional development institute to train faculty in competency-based education and student-centered pedagogy. Most importantly, we’ve created an empowering and nurturing culture that celebrates creativity, entrepreneurship, and servant leadership.

Until now, we have intentionally kept our student body small. We resisted the urge to scale too quickly and risk jeopardizing our outcomes. This decade of laser focus has given us valuable insight into what works - and what doesn’t - in preparing young people in emerging markets for the careers of the future. 

As a result, Akilah and Davis College are uniquely positioned to scale our online and blended education programs that inspire students to think critically and creatively about how to build a more sustainable world. In the midst of a global pandemic, and with climate change, urbanization, population growth, and major technological shifts to the global economy as the backdrop, there can be no greater value proposition.

In Hong Kong where I currently reside, young people, particularly those from immigrant and refugee families, are unable to access higher education that is high-quality, affordable, and leads directly to workforce outcomes. Therefore, we launched our first campus outside of Africa in Hong Kong, targeting underserved youth across Southeast Asia. 

We envisioned a lean campus footprint and built a team to prepare for our first enrollment in August 2020. Just months after hiring our team, however, Hong Kong erupted in civil strife as young people protested China’s increasing influence. Nearly simultaneously, Hong Kong experienced the COVID-19 pandemic’s rise in Asia. Education institutions were now indefinitely closed for public health and safety. 

Consequently, we had to postpone our efforts to open a campus in Hong Kong. While extremely disappointing, the ensuing global coronavirus pandemic highlighted a growing demand for online diploma and degrees. We pivoted quickly to expedite our move to online competency-based education. Not only does this allow us to respond to the immediate crisis and be prepared for future crises, it also provides a life-changing, affordable education option for African and Asian students who cannot enroll in a traditional, campus-based program or need more flexibility in their studies.

In 2015, my team and I created Mindsky, an online platform designed to streamline the job-search process for Akilah graduates by connecting them directly to employers searching for talent. Employers posted their internships and job opportunities on the job board. Members applied for openings directly on the platform using its formatted online profile builder as their application document. Hiring managers viewed and sorted applications as they came in.

The platform was innovative and timely and ideally would have been available to other universities to help their graduates source jobs. But East Africa was not ready for this technology - employers, it turned out, preferred paper resumes. 

I felt a lot of shame and disappointment that our team spent countless hours and resources developing Mindsky. As a leader, though, I couldn’t dwell on this. It was detrimental to my team. By letting these emotions go, we were able to pivot. We still use Mindsky internally for career support, just differently than I envisioned. And I learned a valuable leadership lesson: I am more than my accomplishments. Sometimes, failure is ok. When I understood that, I led more effectively.

The world is changing. Technological innovation, rapid urbanization, shifting labor division between humans and machines, and climate change are mega trends impacting the future of work. The demand for routine-based skills is decreasing, while soft skills and technology skills are in demand. Adaptation to climate change is projected to create 60 million new jobs by 2030. These are realities and opportunities that educators must respond to.

The success of Davis College is rooted in our ability to respond to these mega trends. We prepare young people with the requisite skills to compete for the jobs of today and tomorrow, with the knowledge, values, and confidence to outperform their peers. 

We offer a unique hybrid of a liberal arts curricula, combining competency-based (CBE) education, which is an outcomes-based, student-centered approach to learning, with a customized, data-driven academic model. Our program addresses students’ needs through group work, academic support, career coaching, and community service. Curriculum content is geographically and culturally relevant.

Davis College’s unbundled faculty structure ensures students thrive: instructors design the curriculum and teach courses; assessment experts continually refine competency checks; program mentors provide academic support; and coaches support students’ personal and professional success. 

Finally, we are the only college in Africa that requires students to take courses in sustainability, considering it a career competency. Our students are not only prepared to understand and address the effects of climate change, they are prepared to reimagine cities, energy, transportation, and livelihoods on our rapidly changing planet.

Davis and Akilah’s Theory of Change posits that if promising young women and men who have graduated secondary school and come from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds are given a market-relevant and competency-based education, leadership skills, and career development services, then they will develop proficiency or mastery of the following core competencies: (1) Critical Thinking; (2) English and Communication; (3) Leadership and Responsibility; (4) Information Technology and Quantitative Literacy; (5) Personal Growth and Self-Confidence; and (6) Career Navigation. Students simultaneously build program competencies in Information Systems, Business Management and Entrepreneurship, and Hospitality Management and Sustainable Tourism.

If students achieve proficiency or mastery of the program and core competencies described, then they will be prepared and motivated to use what they’ve learned outside of the classroom: these young men and women will graduate from Davis and Akilah “career ready.” Graduates’ career readiness facilitates their ability to secure employment and advance in their career pathways, and, ultimately, achieve economic independence and obtain leadership roles in the workplace and in society.

Against our Theory of Change, Davis and Akilah’s Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Department tracks student and graduate outputs (the competencies students acquire) and outcomes (how students utilize those competencies). We use the Canvas Learning Management System to effectively track student progress and measure proficiency or mastery. Our academic team reviews this data regularly to enable adjustments to the curriculum or interventions regarding a student’s performance. 

The key outcomes we seek to measure are:

• Increased number of graduates who apply academic and market-relevant skills learned in their jobs;
• Increased number of graduates who apply leadership skills learned in their jobs, households, and communities; and,
• Increased number of graduates who apply career navigation skills to secure or advance employment.

We track graduate outcomes at six-months and survey a statistically significant sample of graduates at the 12- and 24-month marks. We triangulate results through focus groups and selected interviews with employers. 

Currently, we have 961 Akilah students in our blended and face-to-face programs, totaling  2,500 students and alumnae to date. With all schools closed in Rwanda at least through September due to the pandemic, we are planning to enroll two cohorts next year of  approximately 1,000 students.  

 In the next five years, we plan to reach an additional 29,000 students, including 16,000 graduates, through our online and blended competency-based diploma, degree and certificate programs in Africa and Asia.

The next decade will see an additional 350 million post secondary graduates, with Africa and Asia the driving force behind the expansion. This potential higher education crisis is exacerbated in developing markets, which desperately need qualified human capital to drive sustainable economic growth.

Further, the health of our planet and the education of young people are inextricably linked. Global scientists compiled the most substantive solutions to climate change, and educating women and girls was number six on the list. Educated women have smaller and healthier families. The majority of the world’s farmers are women. With access to education, they can increase their food production and reduce the need to cut down forests.

Addressing these challenges is our primary goal. To that end, over the next year we will launch our online competency-based Information Systems and Business Management and Entrepreneurship Diploma programs and enroll our first cohort of students from Africa and Asia. 

Before the COVID crisis, Davis and Akilah had intended to scale into 10 new markets by 2030 through lean campus programs and online education. Malawi, Uganda and Hong Kong were among the first countries. Market research and socioeconomic data validated the demand for our academic program offerings and promise of entrepreneurial and career-focused outcomes for young women and men, as well as the added value to local economies and ecosystems. Over the next five years, we expect to realize those expansion goals and by 2030, to be enrolling over 100,000 students annually across our programs.

Growth Capital: The pandemic and economic crisis has resulted in a downward funding turn. In particular, the financial resources intended to fuel our expansion have been negatively affected, with funders unable to fulfill current pledges. Beyond that, we need sufficient growth capital to support our operations as we scale.

Student Financing: CHANCEN’s ISA program targets vulnerable youth in Africa to provide access to higher education programs with strong employment track records. CHANCEN is committed to reaching the most vulnerable students, ensuring that at least 50 percent come from rural areas, are female, and from households earning 700,000 Rwandan Francs or less. Graduate repayments are put back into a fund managed by CHANCEN to be available for future students. However, sufficient loan capital to fund growing numbers of ISAs is a challenge as we scale. Additionally, CHANCEN does not fund students in Asia, so student financing for Asia is a barrier.  

Alumnae Employment: As we scale, students will be responsible for sourcing their own internships and employment, with career support from our academic team, and this could be challenging in a post-pandemic economic climate, from which the markets and private sector are slowly recovering.  

Accreditation: Online education is relatively new to our Rwandan accrediting body - the Ministry of Education’s Workforce Development Authority. Once approved, we will be one of the first online programs accredited in-country. However, their timeline has been continuously delayed due to various factors, including the pandemic, so we view accreditation as a challenge.

Growth Capital: We received the Paycheck Protection Program and EIDL loans from the US government, and have run a successful fundraising campaign in order to offset revenue losses due to the financial crisis. We are also applying for funding from multiple institutional funders as we prepare to scale and are talking to potential impact debt investors and venture philanthropists about making a strategic investment in Davis and Akilah.

Student Financing: We are helping to make important introductions to potential investors and partners, such as Kiva and PG Impact, on CHANCEN’s behalf as well as exploring new tuition  financing partners beyond CHANCEN, especially for Asia. 

Alumnae Employment: We currently have over 300 private sector partners across East Africa and Asia. Our global careers department will continue to focus on expanding the number of local and regional partners as we scale. We are also working to develop several longer-term strategic partnerships with selected global corporations to enable our graduates’ future employment. 

Accreditation: We have built a strong relationship with the Workforce Development Authority (WDA) and Ministry of Education in Rwanda over the past ten years. We are working in partnership with them in order to ensure our online programs are accredited in a timely manner. Further, we intend to secure global accreditation for our online programs in a different country within the next three years.

CHANCEN International: CHANCEN International offers ISAs to African students with financial need. Qualifying students can finance up to 85% of their tuition and begin repayments once they secure employment post-graduation. The money repaid by students is then available to future cohorts. 

Private Sector Partners: Davis and Akilah work with more than 300 partners in the private sector, ranging from innovative start-ups to global corporations like Andela and Marriott, who provide internship and employment opportunities for graduates. Following the required three-month internship, we gather employer feedback on student performance to inform curriculum refinements. This same process will be used to update our online curriculum.

Workforce Development Authority: The Workforce Development Authority is our accrediting body in Rwanda. We have launched three diplomas in Business Management and Entrepreneurship, Information Systems, and Hospitality Management and Sustainable Tourism. In 2018, we accredited our first blended program in BME, and WDA is providing advice and counsel as we work to accredit our new online diplomas. 

Entangled Solutions: Our strategy for blended learning and the transition to online education was developed in partnership with Michael Horn, the co-founder of the Institute for Disruptive Innovation at Harvard, and the Entangled Group’s team of e-learning experts.

Accenture: A recent pro-bono partnership with Accenture mapped the landscape in East Africa to help inform what gaps lie in the private sector, and what new diploma and degree programs will be in high demand over the next decade. Accenture continues to provide project-based pro-bono support.

Our current financial model is primarily funded through a combination of philanthropy and tuition paid by our students. Philanthropic gifts are received as grants and donations that are channeled through the Davis Akilah Foundation - a registered 501c3 in the United States. These funds are annually transferred as a grant to Davis College Rwanda - the private entity registered in Rwanda that operates our academic programs. 

Our key customer bases are young men and women in Africa and Asia who enroll in our campus-based and online education programs. The demand for our programs is high (over 11,000 applications received for our last intake pre-COVID), in large part because of our high workforce outcomes for graduates. In addition, we have artificially kept the price of tution low to be accessible and affordable to students of all socioeconomic backgrounds. What this means is that all students effectively receive a tuition subsidy which is paid for through philanthropy. Even with this subsidy, African students who are unable to cover their total tuition fees and come from low-income backgrounds are eligible for an ISA through CHANCEN International. Students pay back their ISAs gradually upon graduation once they obtain employment. 

As we explain in the subsequent question, we are actively working to reduce our total cost to serve by lowering our fixed costs and widening our customer base.

As our innovation scales, we expect to reduce our dependence on philanthropy and become financially self-sufficient through a combination of student tuition revenue and earned income from other institutions who may wish to license our academic model, university portal, and curriculum. In Rwanda for example, we expect to reach break-even by 2024 by: 1) leveraging our fixed costs across larger numbers of students; 2) gradually raising the cost of tuition, with scholarships and ISAs available for students in need; and 3) reducing our cost-to-serve via technology and other gained efficiencies embedded in our academic model. We have already lowered our cost to serve over the past three years from $5,000 USD/student to $2,800 USD/student (students pay or can finance approximately $1,000 per year per program). 

Shifting our current and future competency-based diplomas, degrees, and certificates into an online format will also allow us to effectively reach greater numbers of students and thus widen the pool of those who are able to pay tuition fees. In addition, licensing agreements with other education institutions can take the model to a truly global scale while increasing and diversifying our revenue streams. Finally, we are actively exploring alternative financing mechanisms inclusive of impact debt and venture philanthropy to help fund our innovation as we scale.

Grant Revenue

• AL Mailman Foundation grant $25,000 received November 20, 2019
• AL Mailman Foundation grant: $25,000 received April 2, 2020
• Arthur and Veronica Goldberg Foundation $30,000 received December 10, 2019
• Cresap Family Foundation $50,000 received October 25, 2019
• Five Together Foundation grant: $50,000 received November 21, 2019
• Imago Dei Fund grant payment: $166,667 received Sept 14, 2019
• Imago Dei Fund grant payment $166,667 received June 10, 2020
• Mastercard Foundation Grant: $367,458 awarded June 30, 2020 receipt pending 
• Micah 6:8 Foundation grant: $50,000 received April 6, 2020
• Micah 6:8 Foundation COVID-19 grant $30,000 received May 28, 2020
• PG Impact grant $29,700 received May 20, 2020
• Segal Family Foundation grant: $65,000 received in 4 payments Oct, Jan, Apr, July
• The Lester Fund grant: $25,000 received June 10, 2020
• Uechtritz Foundation $191,654 received July, Nov, Mar, Apr, June
• Other Grants Various $168,631 received 2019-2020

Donations

• Foundations & Trusts Various $263,700 received 2019-2020
• Individuals Various $ 1,465,656 received 2019-2020
• Organizations Various $ 164,049 received 2019-2020
• Special Event Revenue $ 670,713 received 2019-2020

Student Tuition

• Tuition (Davis College) $896,313 received 2019-2020

Debt

• U.S. Paycheck Protection Program loan $44,500 received June 1, 2020
• U.S. Small Business Administration EIDL loan: $150,000 received July 1, 2020

We are seeking to raise: 

• $650K by August 31, 2020 
• $1.4M Philanthropy (grants or individual donors) by December 31, 2020 
• $450K Philanthropy by August 31, 2021 
• $2.5M Debt and/or Philanthropy for campus acquisition by December 31, 2020 

$5.324 million, inclusive of instructional costs

Akilah has been a pioneer and leader in the women’s education space for the last decade. Our innovative and holistic approach to providing educational and economic opportunities for underserved young women has resulted in demonstrative results, not only for the women themselves but for their families, communities, and society more broadly  We expect Davis College’s online and blended education programs will be in equally high demand and achieve comparable academic and professional outcomes. 

I believe that The Elevate Prize will help and support our scale efforts in emerging markets in the following ways: 

Financial Resources: An award from Elevate will provide critical resources that will catalyze our efforts to combat the inequities in global higher education and allow us to serve thousands of underserved students over the next five years. We will be able to develop new market- relevant diploma and degree programs that will prepare our graduates to address the acute challenges we face in a rapidly changing world. 

Employment Outcomes: In addition to financial resources, I believe the visibility of this prize will unlock a host of new global, regional, and local resource and employment partners across Africa and Asia that are clamoring for talent who not only possess the requisite technical skills for the jobs of today and tomorrow, but can also critically analyze, innovate, problem-solve, navigate their own careers, and lead with confidence.

As mentioned above, due to the coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic crisis, our funding has been impacted. We need new and diverse board leadership to provide strategic guidance on our growth plans, priorities, and funding model as well as to open up new networks of potential supporters and investors. Further, additional marketing and media exposure to support our recruitment efforts in new markets as well as drive visibility and fundraising would be particularly helpful. 

We would like to partner with the following organizations:

• Global Innovation Fund (funding)
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (funding)
• Google (employment)

We would also like to partner with a PR and marketing firm in order to provide greater exposure for our recruitment and fundraising efforts. 

Finally, we would love to partner with a leading university or data-driven monitoring and evaluation firm to execute an external longitudinal study (pro-bono if possible) to measure the lasting impact of our programs.