About Reach
A new era in higher education
Reach is the nation's only nonprofit accredited university fully dedicated to championing the Apprenticeship Degree — an affordable path for working adults to gain a university education and degree.
Get to know Reach University
Our vision
Nobody should be forced to choose between a job and a degree. We envision a world where everyone everywhere has access to fully job-embedded higher education, so that skill and effort—not money or connections—are what it takes to get ahead.
How we get there
Reach University puts innovation to work. We seek to advance the efficacy and adoption of inquiry-based instructional methods and job-embedded degree pathways in higher education. This work starts with helping schools recruit and train highly effective teachers and leaders.
What we do
We’re breaking the mold to demonstrate that the Apprenticeship Degree can address crucial skill shortages in a variety of fields, reduce the cost of higher education, and expand opportunity.
The Reach Method
To overcome obstacles that commonly impede adult learners, Reach employs a unique approach. We call it the Reach Method. Each of our degree and certificate programs is designed to meet the following five standards.
Efficiency
Half of the learning comes from what learners already do in their full-time job.
Flexibility
Online Oxford-style seminars are held after work hours on nights and weekends.
Relevance & Applicability
Learning is relentlessly tailored to the workplace, with theory linked to practice throughout.
Affordability
Learners are paid to earn a degree or certificate and take on zero student debt.
Professional Capital
Learners advance into a job in their community; employers build a “grow-your-own” pipeline.
We’re just getting started
Reach University emerged in 2020 as a new kind of higher education institution. We set out to pioneer the Apprenticeship Degree in the United States and address the teacher shortage.
Today, our faculty has grown to over 100 job-embedded professors of practice, and our programs have expanded from California to six additional states — Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Colorado, Texas, and Tennessee — with undergraduate enrollment surging by more than 20x.
And in 2024, we launched the National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree at Reach to bring about systematic adoption of the Apprenticeship Degree nationwide.
100% job-embedded programs
300+ school partners in the US
25:1 student-to-faculty ratio in our seminars
HUMAN DIGNITY & belonging
Committed to the full self-expression of our entire community
We champion human dignity and belonging in all the spaces we occupy. We believe that each person’s value arises not merely as an avatar of group identity – such as class, race, gender, religion, orientation, or origin – but from simply being human. Each individual brings a distinctive background that is grounded in the shared and universal commonality of humanity. In the context of our work at Reach, the pursuit of affordable, accessible, and high-quality education for all individuals that seek it — including those in underserved rural and urban communities — is enshrined in our vision, mission, and institutional learning objectives.
Successful work-and-learn environments require an authentic sense of belonging. This means each individual human being feels valued as part of the larger group. The group – and its diversity – is valued by each individual. Embracing diversity in all its forms is central. Organizations looking to achieve excellence assemble a “dream team” of different, complementary human beings who are more powerful and insightful together than apart. At Reach, we seek in our admissions and hiring to achieve broad representation of the communities we serve. Our approach aims to infuse candidates, faculty, and staff with the belief that they, no matter their identity, truly belong in higher education.
What our team says about Reach University
The Reach Report
Explore stories about the impact of Apprenticeship Degrees and job-embedded learning.