On June 24, 2026, Joe E. Ross, President and CEO of Reach University, testified before the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce's Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, advancing Reach’s Apprenticeship Degree model within the national policy conversation about the future of higher education and workforce development.
The hearing brought together higher education and workforce leaders to examine how modern apprenticeship models can help meet the needs of today’s workers, employers, and economy.
Ross’s testimony centered on a national challenge: millions of working adults want the opportunity a degree can provide. At the same time, many cannot afford to stop working, leave their communities, or take on student debt in order to pursue one.
Employers across career sectors face shortages in roles that require postsecondary credentials. In many schools, hospitals, and community organizations, the people who could help fill those roles are already working in classrooms, care settings, and local institutions every day.
Ross outlined Reach’s Apprenticeship Degree and the ABCs that define them: Affordability by design, with no student loan debt; Based in the workplace from day one through graduation; and rendering academic Credit for structured on-the-job work. Together, those principles make it possible for working adults to earn debt-free degrees while staying employed.
In his testimony, Ross also highlighted that the Apprenticeship Degree is not merely a workforce strategy. It is a higher education model designed around the realities of working adults. Reach combines structured workplace learning with rigorous academic instruction, including live seminars, practitioner faculty, and liberal arts coursework in areas such as mathematics, computational thinking, and AI literacy.
Reach now serves 3,400 working adults across 10 states. Sixty-five percent of Reach candidates are Pell eligible, and 36 percent live in rural communities. The university works with 575 employer partners and continues to build degree pathways in education and healthcare.
In his testimony, Ross shared the story of Nichole Menard, a former special education aide in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana. As a widowed mother earning $20,000 a year, college once felt out of reach. Through Reach, she was able to turn her school-based role into a degree pathway. Menard is now a math and science teacher serving the same community that first invested in her.
Nichole’s journey reflects the larger goal of the Apprenticeship Degree: working adults should not have to leave their jobs, leave their communities, or go into debt to better their lives and careers.
Through Reach University and its National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree (NCAD), Reach is working with peer institutions and partners to help bring the model to more candidates, employers, and communities.
That work reflects a broader recognition that the country needs postsecondary pathways that are affordable, rigorous, practical, and connected to the realities of working adults.
For Reach, the hearing was an opportunity to contribute directly to a growing national conversation about how higher education can better serve today’s learners and tomorrow’s workforce.
Employers face persistent workforce shortages. Working adults need affordable pathways to degrees and careers. Communities need talent pipelines that grow from within. The Apprenticeship Degree brings those needs together by treating the workplace not as separate from higher education, but as a meaningful, intentional part of it.
As Ross told lawmakers, “The demand is there. The infrastructure is there. And the proof points are emerging.” For Reach University and NCAD, the work ahead is to help more institutions and employers see what is possible when jobs become degrees, and when higher education is built around the working adults it has too often left behind.