Joe Fuller: Has generative AI rendered fast-track tech training obsolete or made it more necessary than ever? And if automation is reshaping career paths, what will upward mobility look like in the future?

Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast from Harvard Business School. I’m your host, Harvard Business School professor and non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Joe Fuller. I’m joined today by Plinio Ayala, CEO of Per Scholas, a long-established nonprofit offering tech training and job placement. Open to all, its programs predominantly serve communities that have been historically underrepresented in the tech workforce. We’ll talk about Per Scholas’ fusion of intensive training courses and long-term skills development. We’ll discuss the importance of training in social or soft skills and talk about Per Scholas’ tuition-free model and support services. We’ll also look at its embrace of AI as both an organizational resource and as a key element in its technical training. And we’ll talk about why, despite forecasts of fewer entry-level tech jobs, Per Scholas remains bullish about its graduates’ prospects. Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast, Plinio.

Plinio Ayala: Joe, it’s a pleasure to be on with you. Thank you for having me.

Fuller: Of course, Plinio, having worked in the sector for now the better part of 15 years, I’m quite familiar with Per Scholas. But given the fact we have a large and diverse audience, maybe you could give them a quick backgrounder on your institution.

Ayala: What we believe is that, through effective zero-cost IT training, you can create economic mobility for people. Individuals that are often excluded from these great-paying technology careers, through this free training, they have entrée into these amazing companies that lead to very sustainable and very rich technology careers. Since the inception of the program, we’ve trained about 30,000 Americans across the country. On average, 85 percent of our students graduate, 80 percent get jobs. What’s really amazing about this stat—and it reflects the economic return that this program provides—on average, our students earn three times more than what they were earning prior to our training program. It’s a huge return to society and certainly has an impact on the lives of the people that we’re training, but even more so on the lives of those that extend in their household. I happen to be in our Bronx office today, and I was walking by the 6 Line station here. It reminded me of a woman I met about 11 years ago on the subway. She had participated in our program a year prior. She completed, she got two industry-recognized certifications, and she landed a job with a telecommunications company. As she said, “Earning more money than I ever thought I could. Now I can pay for my daughter’s tuition, I can buy her books. My life is better, my daughter’s life is better. Thank you.” There are thousands of stories like that that Per Scholas has produced throughout our 30-year history.

Fuller: Plinio, is a student sponsored by a potential employer, or is a person just enrolling in your program in the hope of getting placed after completion?

Ayala: We have a number of employer partners that actually sponsor roles specifically for their corporations. Those lead to jobs that are very high paying almost immediately. Then we’ve got individuals that we recruit specifically from the communities that we’re in, put them through a series of assessment processes and steps. But they enroll in our program, and we have been able to place 80 percent of all of our graduates. The likelihood of placement in a job is very high if the student completes the initiative.

Fuller: Plinio, those are impressive numbers in terms of completion, which is always a stumbling block in training and also placement. What about the long-term effects? Are you keeping track of your alumni? What do you hear from them? What’s their trajectory after they get that first job?

Ayala: That’s a great question, Joe, and one that is part of this organization’s long-term approach in working with our alum. I think we might be the only tech-training program that’s gone through two random controlled trials. Each one showing that people that go through our program did better than those in the control group in every category. They got jobs at higher rates, earned more money. What we’re finding two years out is that our graduates are typically earning about 20, 25 percent more than what they were earning when they started their careers. And when we provide an upskill opportunity through our career accelerator, the earnings actually are greater. If we can get someone into technology, despite all that’s happening in the space and all the disruption that’s happening, people stay on the job longer, they’re earning more.

Fuller: Plinio, what type of working positions do your graduates end up in? Are these generally full-time jobs, and are they largely with employers, or is it enabled through working on platforms like Upwork and other tech marketplaces that give people opportunity to earn a living but not as a full-time employee?

Ayala: I think it’s a combination of all of that, Joe. However, I’d say that a majority of our students are working full time with benefits in major corporations across the country. There are a number of folks that start their careers as contracted workers, but that’s valuable experience that they gain. That allows them to move their careers into more permanent jobs almost immediately after their initial experience.

Fuller: For a long time, the country became pretty focused on various IT bootcamps, particularly in software engineering. That model has gotten quite stable now; it’s been in place for a long time. It also gets some criticism as narrowing the scope of what people can pursue and really only qualifying them for entry-level jobs. Can you talk a little bit about the pluses and minuses of that model?

Ayala: When you think about an organization like Per Scholas, I think part of our secret sauce is that we are able to construct content and curriculum based on the feedback that we get from employers. We’re creating this talent that is relevant for what employers are seeking now. We’re able to make corrections and adjustments to our coursework relatively quickly, so that we’re constantly responding almost immediately to the needs of employers. I think part of what could be viewed as a negative is that, in some cases, we happen to be a free training program. These bootcamps can be expensive. The people we’re targeting just don’t have the resources to be able to participate in those bootcamps. A program like ours serves a solution for our communities because we don’t charge. In many cases, we’re providing a bunch of support services at no cost to our students that help them complete the training and move onto into these good-paying jobs.

Fuller: Well, certainly for many years, some of the software bootcamps were the escape hatch for well-educated people in humanities and other areas, where they found it was hard to get work even though they might be passionate about their field of study in college but wasn’t really targeted at lower-income, lower-educational-attainment students. One thing that became another dominant trend around 2000 was we kept telling people, “You’ve got to understand software. You’ve got to understand how to code. You’ve got to understand digital devices.” But in the year of AI, where a lot of those tasks are suddenly getting displaced with technology actually creating technology, over 50 percent of the lines of code every month being written in the United States today is being written by [Microsoft] Copilot, as opposed to written by software engineers. How do you account for social skills, or what is sometimes called in the literature “soft skills,” in your program, which are often pointed to as an area where aspiring workers that lack work experience fall short of employer expectations that can lead to disappointing results?

Ayala: That’s a great question, Joe. Let me start by saying that we should not be afraid of AI. Certainly, it’s disrupting the way we are doing work, and it will continue to do that. But I’m excited about the jobs that it will create, especially in the technology space. I think our approach in creating content and curriculum with employers leading the charge has allowed us to stay ahead of what’s happening with AI, as we’ve incorporated AI in almost everything that we do at Per Scholas, both in our training and in our operation—including aspects of soft skills training, which is about 25 percent of our coursework, an essential piece of what we believe is important to create a well-rounded potential employee for a company. It is embedded in all that we do. It’s very contextualized. The idea there is not just to teach someone how to interview or write a resume, but to think critically—to be able to work in a team setting, all the other skills that employers tend to want to have. What we’re hearing from employers is that the technical skills that we’re providing are immensely important, but that the soft skills are just as important.

Fuller: Well, that’s exciting to hear. I think we’re going to have to own up to the fact that we need to do more to try to instill in people the ability to work in unfamiliar groups, spontaneous written and oral communication, negotiating skills, all the things that actually really determine your effectiveness in work as we go forward. Plinio, you said you don’t charge any tuition. How do you finance Per Scholas?

Ayala: Our financial model has historically been built on the largess of foundations and corporations funding our program. I think over the years, we’ve expanded our model to also include corporations that are paying for the talent. In addition to that, beginning to look at where it makes sense accessing government dollars, which at this point represents slightly less than 10 percent of our overall revenue. But I think, as we are embarking on a new strategic plan—just to give you some context, we trained about 5,500 people last year, and we upskilled 2,000 Americans—our object is to triple that by 2030. We recognize that solely building a financial model on just private donations will not be enough. Government funding becomes a much more important piece to our financial model as we think about our growth plans going forward.

Fuller: Plinio, what’s the distinction between the people—the 5,500, versus the 2,000. You described the 2,000 as being upskilled. That seems that those weren’t recent graduates who were getting core skills, but rather trying to expand their skill set or change their career path somehow?

Ayala: That’s exactly right, Joe. I think in the middle of the pandemic, we decided that our end game was not getting someone that first job. It was really, how do we move people along their career pathway, get them to that second and third job, where we were seeing pretty significant increases in wages. Our hope was to get as many people to a thriving wage as possible, where we know that, at that point, they’re beginning to create wealth for themselves and their families. We instituted a new initiative called “Career Accelerator,” where we’re offering very intentional upskilling opportunities to our graduates in targeted areas that allow them to grow their careers. The 5,500 people that we served in our immersive programs, those are first-time learners entering into a career in IT. Those that we upskilled are those folks that are in jobs but are needing additional training, not only just to remain in their job, but to grow. You can imagine with all that’s happening in technology and all the changes that are occurring, upskilling has become a very important aspect of our work.

Fuller: Well, I think that’s a terrific insight—that we have a lot of people who are in jobs that don’t really have a clear path to a substantially higher income in the position they’re in. It may be that they work in a field like advanced manufacturing, where the ratio of supervisors to frontline employees is often over 20-to-1. Even if you’re the best of those frontline employees, the job above you doesn’t open up much. Two, jobs that are just structurally not very remunerative and giving people an opportunity—people who already have work experience, therefore much more likely to have refined those social skills that are so critical to staying employed—an opportunity to jump onto a different career path is an exciting initiative. Let’s come back to the potential for enhanced government funding. One subject that’s been on a lot of people’s minds for as long as I can remember are loosening up the restrictions in the so-called “Higher Education Act,” which is the principal vehicle for financing student learning, that are so geared around a four-year college experience. We’ve talked about so-called “lifetime Pell.” We’ve talked about financing shorter, more-focused programs. But somehow, we’ve never been able to make that happen. Are you optimistic that we’ll get some progress on that front?

Ayala: I am actually encouraged, Joe. I think this is a bipartisan issue. There should be no concern around funding effective models that are returning a pretty significant return to our economy. I think there’s tremendous opportunity with the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act [WIOA] reauthorization that’s being discussed in Congress currently. I’ll give you an example. We don’t tend to access WIOA vouchers just because the process has been very difficult in getting a learner to a center to get a voucher and then back to us in time to start a class. However, some of the legislation that’s being proposed allows us to be able to enroll folks with a voucher when they are in class, as opposed to sending them to one of the one-stops. That small tweak to the legislation opens up a tremendous amount of potential resources for an organization like Per Scholas. I’m also encouraged around the language that’s being proposed for short-term Pell—the recognition that they are proven effective, proven models out there that can provide the skills that someone needs in a 15-week period that can move them into a career, and not have to have someone go through a two-year or four-year experience at a local college. By the way, higher ed plays a huge role in all of this. But some of the recognition that not everybody’s ready or can go to college, but can participate in a model like this that can move them into a career, then all types of possibilities open up for someone once they’re working and they can decide which way they want to continue to build their career and their future.

Fuller: Well, it may very well be that using a vehicle like WIOA, or just separate legislation, is the formula for cracking this safe, because getting it into a reauthorization of Higher Education Act immediately means that you’re in such a complicated negotiation with so many constituencies that you’re at risk of not getting progress in something that’s targeted and focused, and takes advantage of this being the ultimate purple issue. What elected official is against better economic opportunity for more of their constituents? Plinio, one thing that I’ve noticed you’ve been doing, which I was excited to see, is that, in some instances, you’re providing some so-called “surround services” and financing for your students. Can you tell me what motivated that, and what type of impact it’s having on their success rates?

Ayala: We recognized as we were beginning to grow that we were excluding potential learners in our program because they didn’t have the financial stability to be able to participate. We worked with Social Finance through the Google Fund to be able to launch what we’ve called the “0 percent loan.” It’s a brand-new product in the market, but it really is intended to help someone survive while they’re in 12 to 15 weeks of training. It’s a $3,000 loan. The learner uses it the way they need to use it. There’s no prescriptive requirements around the usage. And the student pays it back over the course of three years once they’ve landed a job and are hitting a certain earning milestone. If something happens that they lose their job during that period, the loan goes into forbearance. At the end of the three years, whatever they’ve paid, the loan is forgiven. This is all at zero interest. It really has allowed a larger percentage of folks that couldn’t participate in this program now participating. What we’re also noticing is that folks that are accessing this loan are graduating at higher rates and getting jobs faster. That’s all so intuitive. If you land a job, and you can’t afford to pay for transportation to get to that job, you’re not going to keep that job. But this allows folks to have the funds that they need to get them to that first paycheck.

Fuller: Well, our listeners are certainly familiar with Social Finance. Tracy Palandjian has been a guest on our program. Of course, we’re proud of her. She’s a graduate of Harvard Business School, as well. In terms of those surround payments, it certainly validates some of our research, which shows that, actually, it’s a majority of the people in the United States—who are working but desire more hours—are currently part-time workers. They’re really trapped in that part-time role because they’ve got other demands on their time. They can’t afford not to be doing the part-time work, but they don’t have the time and resources to try to acquire skills that would allow them to get a better-paying full-time job. They are the biggest part of what we call “hidden workers” in our analysis, people who are really screened out of consideration for better positions because of various attributes in their background or current employment status that mean they get knocked out of the process through the AI associated with evaluating candidates that almost all large companies use. Plinio, you’re in 24 cities, if I’m not mistaken. You’ve served largely an urban constituency, largely communities of color. We’re discussing this in March 2025, now more than a year after the Supreme Court’s decision related to affirmative action. What’s been your reaction to that? What’s been the reaction of employers to that? How are you responding to this re-visitation of programs that some might accuse of being focused on specific subsets of the population?

Ayala: Joe, we recruit people from the communities where we have offices, so a reflection of our population is really driven by where we’re located. Our approach has always been creating economic opportunities for all Americans. The bottom line for me is that what I’m trying to do is help to rebuild the middle class by creating these effective training programs and pushing people into opportunities that allow them to make, over time, six figures. When you look at the economic return of something like this, and you see the impact that it’s having across the board—not only building communities and helping to strengthen those communities, but also moving people away from being dependent on the system to now contributing to the system—we’re strengthen the American economy. This should not be controversial at all. For us, we’ll continue to do what we do over the last 30 years of this organization’s history because it’s an economic imperative for this nation.

Fuller: Over the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of discussion about skills-based hiring, where employers start trying to move away from credentials they’ve relied on historically—things like, “Do you have a four-year college-grade associate’s degree?” “How many years of work experience do you have?” Even what your grade point average or standardized testing score was—in favor of hiring people on the basis of what they can do, not what we suppose they can do based on inference we gather from some credential or background they’ve got. What’s been your experience, not so much with protestations about saying they’re skills-based hiring, but the effectiveness with which they’re actually doing it? Do you think there’s momentum behind it?

Ayala: I think there’s been some traction over the last five to 10 years around this–not as much as I would like—and I think it all depends on the entry point within that company. I think if you talk to a CIO or a CTO of a company, they get it and understand it, and are willing to think differently about hiring. When you talk to the Chief Hiring Officer or the Chief People Person, that becomes a bit more difficult of a conversation to have. I understand that. They’re held against outcomes that allow them to want to defer to a four-year degree. It’s been difficult to be able to penetrate corporations through that office. Now with that said, I think there’s been some very strong initiatives being built across the country, where companies are taking a lead in purposefully going after talent that is nontraditional and working with organizations like Per Scholas to produce that talent. You got examples with organizations like Year Up, inPowered, CodePath, a number of very effective, proven models that are building specific programs with corporations that are building talent that are not four-year-degree individuals.

Fuller: I would just add, from our research, that often the breakdown seems to be at the level literally of the hiring manager, the person who will be the supervisor of that worker. That, when you change the policy at the corporate level or division level or institution level, that opens the aperture on who gets looked at. But if the hiring manager really is just used to hiring somebody with a degree, doesn’t really know what questions to ask to satisfy themselves that someone’s got the right skills—that there aren’t assessments that can be used to bolster that appraisal, that default to what they’re used to—I think sometimes those people in the executive suite forget that most bosses hire somebody they think will help them fulfill their objectives better and easier. Most bosses don’t want to be the person that took a chance on someone if that person fails in that role and is explaining to their boss, “What was the big idea in hiring somebody that was unlike the people we’ve hired in the past?” We’re going to have to change some processes if we’re going to get a whole lot different outcomes.

Ayala: I don’t disagree with that, Joe. However, I have seen more and more hiring managers, just because they’re not finding enough talent, to think differently about hiring and a greater willingness to take a shot on someone like a graduate from a Per Scholas program. At the end of the day, I think our value proposition is get one in. Once you see the value, they tend to come back and hire more.

Fuller: Absolutely. I think that’s one of the great things about programs like yours, that you have a recognized credential now with 35,000 graduates, 24 sites, and a long history of success and responding to changes in demand and proving that you can move on with technological developments, as you seem to be doing with AI. Plinio, it seems that a lot of your effectiveness is rooted in your ability to partner with others. You mentioned Social Finance, you mentioned CodePath, you’ve mentioned Year Up. All those CEOs have appeared on this podcast. But you’ve also mentioned partnering with employers over time and deepening those partnerships, particularly once you’ve landed those first couple of graduates and demonstrated the efficacy of your program. How do you approach this? Because our observation is that partnerships are easy to talk about. But like any type of permanent affiliation—whether it’s marriage or being tenured—it takes work to keep that relationship healthy and effective and working for both parties.

Ayala: Our work with employers, I think, is the key to our success. They drive how we think about our program and almost every aspect of implementation of our program, from the assessment tools we create to the curriculum we use. The creation of this talent that’s specific to an employer allows immediately that employer to recognize the importance of continuing the relationship with Per Scholars, because we’re building talent at low cost, no cost, to these employers, and they’re taking full advantage of that. We’ve had these amazing relationships with employers throughout the years that continue to expand over time. Companies like Barclays and TEKSystems and Cognizant and Capgemini, PeopleShores—these organizations have hired dozens, in some cases hundreds, of our graduates and continue to come back solely because the talent is so good, and it makes sense for them to hire.

Fuller: Have you found, over your time at Per Scholas, that what partners are seeking or the standards that they’re holding you to have changed at all?

Ayala: I think we’ve changed our approach. When we started Per Scholas, our approach to employers was more from an altruistic lens: Hire someone from the community; it’s a good thing to do. That was just a poor approach. That’s not sustainable or expandable. What we quickly realized as we started attaching data to our performance and doing additional research, that there was a clear value proposition to employers. We were saving them money through the training that we were doing. Our graduates were lasting on the job longer than someone else that they could hire off the street. All of that allowed us to change and pivot our message to employers. When we approach an employer, it’s with, “How can we help solve your hiring problem? How can we together build a program that effective for you and effective for the mission of this organization?”

Fuller: Well, Plinio, you’ve been at the organization, leading it for a long time, 30 years of history for Per Scholas. What can we expect to see from Per Scholas over the next, well, let’s say 10 years?

Ayala: We know that our model leads to very effective and sustainable technology careers. We want to do more. We want to go deeper in the cities that we’re in. Where it makes sense, we’ll expand into new geographies. Our goal is to triple our impact by 2030. We’re on the path to do that. We’re really excited about the plan we’ve just created. Think about the impact that that’ll have, Joe. Think about not just on the lives of those folks that go through our training, but on the lives of potentially their children, and their spouses, and their significant others. It’s really a multiplier effect that this program has, and I’m really excited about its future.

Fuller: Well, Plinio, that sounds like an aggressive and most worthwhile goal, although you’ll have to keep your eyes peeled on the subway. If you triple your impact, you’re going to be getting importuned more on subway cars around the country if you’re able to reach that expanded population. Well, Plinio Ayala, CEO of Per Scholas, such a pleasure to have you on our podcast.

Ayala: Pleasure was mine. Thank you very much for having me.

Fuller: We hope you enjoy the Managing the Future of Work podcast. If you haven’t already, please subscribe and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts. You can find out more about the Managing the Future of Work Project at our website hbs.edu/managingthefutureofwork. While you’re there, sign up for our newsletter.