Eric Bing, Chancellor & CEO, The College of Health Care Professions

In an interview with Invest:, Eric Bing, chancellor and CEO of The College of Health Care Professions (CHCP), discussed healthcare workforce shortages, changing student expectations, and CHCP’s role in expanding career-focused healthcare education. “A recent Lightcast study found that our students receive $15.30 for every dollar they invest with CHCP,” Bing said.

How is Houston’s growth as a healthcare hub shaping demand for education and workforce training?

From a growth standpoint, we are in our 11th year of growing at an average 15% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). We have been on a solid trajectory and have continued to grow steadily.

One of the real opportunities in higher education today is via better supporting adult learners. Many are taking care of children, working one or two jobs, dealing with elder care, and managing daily life. CHCP has redeveloped college education to work for an adult learner who is living day to day and does not have the luxury of going off to college for four years.

Where are healthcare employers facing the greatest staffing shortages?

It is across the board. We hear about shortages of doctors and nurses every day, but there are also shortages in allied health care: surgical technicians, medical assistants, radiology technologists, sonographers, and certified nursing assistants.

Allied health often gets missed in the conversation. We teach nursing, but we also train surgical technicians, cardiovascular technicians, sonographers, medical assistants, coding and billing professionals, and dental assistants, to name a few programs. These roles make up about 50% to 60% of all personnel in healthcare facilities.

Healthcare facilities are also not just large hospital towers downtown. They include imaging centers, urgent care centers, standalone emergency rooms, orthopedic centers, physician networks, community health organizations, and many other parts of a distributed healthcare system.

How are students’ expectations changing around flexibility, program length, and career outcomes?

In the United States, we are seeing a dramatic change in expectations around education. Students are analyzing their investment in college and asking whether they are receiving a positive return. They are looking at the amount of time it takes and the job outcome at the end.

From our standpoint, everything we do is healthcare education. Students want to graduate, become nationally certified where required, and start a career by being hired for their first job in that field.

When you look at how complicated and busy people’s lives are, students are looking for a college that creates flexibility around the life they are living. That is what we have worked hard to build over the past 12 years: changing how we deliver college education so it works for aspiring professionals regardless of their life circumstances.

How does CHCP balance faster training with educational quality and workforce readiness?

We have four main components to how we think about college and how we have changed the traditional model. The first is creating earn-and-learn pathways. We looked at a busy adult learner, such as a single mom who is smart, committed, and ready, but also juggling children, work, and a household. We asked how we could break up education so that students can earn and learn.

If someone cannot go to school for two or four years straight through, we can help them earn a short-term certification that helps stabilize them, likely gives them both a financial bump and access to regular hours and healthcare benefits, and then allows them to stack that credential into an associate’s degree and then a bachelor’s degree.

For example, we have a limited medical radiology technologist program that takes 13 months to complete. Students can become certified in the state, then stack those credits toward an associate’s degree in radiology technology, and then stack that into a bachelor’s degree. A medical assistant can become nationally certified in nine months, start working, and completely change their life.

The second component is flexible but structured environments. Many of our students are first-generation students, and if you hand them a college catalog, they may not know what to take and may become overwhelmed. Our programs are structured, so students know exactly which classes they are taking.

We also moved to flipped classrooms. A student may come to campus two days a week, while the rest of the coursework is completed online with continued connection to faculty, career services, financial aid, and the broader support team. We offer one-day-on-campus models, online programs with boot camps, day and evening options, and we are testing Saturday options in Fort Worth.

The third component is work-integrated learning. We have more than 5,000 clinical partners in Texas. Students complete externships where they work with an employer as part of their program, and many are hired directly out of those externships. We have two customers: our students and our employers. Both are equally important to ensure we are meeting everyone’s needs.

The fourth piece is continual student support. We hold everyone accountable, but we do it with compassion and respect. When issues come up in people’s lives, we help connect them with the resources needed to solve them and allow them to continue their education.

How is CHCP incorporating technology and digital workflow skills into its programs?

When we moved to the two-day-a-week flipped classroom model for some of our programs, and later to the one-day model, we effectively created an environment where every student had to learn to use a laptop. As part of tuition, students receive scrubs and a laptop. Using a phone is different from using a laptop, and almost all healthcare equipment is keyboard- or screen-based in some way.

We use simulation modules and adaptive learning. Most students use e-books rather than hard-copy books. In a healthcare setting, everything is on a screen. By the time students reach their externships, they are comfortable with these tools.

We are excited about AI. AI can help us understand earlier when a student may be having issues before they drop out because it can aggregate so much data. We are working with publishing partners on tools that allow students to engage with an AI tutor bot if midnight is the only time they have to work. AI can free faculty, advisors, and others from routine work to have more time to engage with students directly.

How are employers responding to burnout, retention challenges, and workforce shortages?

Employers are realizing these shortages are long term, so they are much more focused on retention. In the past, some may have assumed they could just quickly find someone else in the market if there was a departure. Now there is a heavy focus on retaining people and growing their skills.

We are seeing more training, more tuition assistance, and more employers working with us to help internal employees stack credentials. Employers are paying more attention to externs and hiring them. In many ways, it is a temp-to-hire model.

Hospitals are extremely concerned about staffing. When support staff are missing, physicians and clinicians must perform additional clerical or clinical support work, which limits how many patients they can see. These shortages are costly to the system, but more importantly, they can impact the quality of healthcare and limit access.

What are CHCP’s top priorities for the next few years?

CHCP is proud of our work because we are helping change lives. Our student population is 89% people of color, 90% women, 52% Hispanic, and 38% first-generation students. Among our Hispanic students, 74% are first-generation students, and a little less than half of our students are parents. This is who we are proud to serve.

Our goal is always to find better, more efficient ways for these students to achieve high graduation rates, high national certification pass rates, and great job opportunities. A recent Lightcast study found that our students receive $15.30 for every dollar they invest with CHCP. Last year, we added $1.5 billion to the Texas economy.

We produce 68% of all radiology certificates from colleges in Texas, 37% of all dental assistants, and 36% of all medical assistants. Houston is our largest market. 

Employers are asking us for more graduates. The question is how to provide the healthcare professionals that are needed while maintaining high success rates for more adult learners.

We are constantly looking at how to innovate. We are excited about AI, and we are building a one-year associate’s degree program instead of a two-year program. We are also working with employer partners, advisory committees, and other colleges nationally to help more adult learners have opportunities for higher education and career success.