The Brighter Side of Education: Research, Innovation & Resources
Hosted by Dr. Lisa Hassler, The Brighter Side of Education: Research, Innovation, & Resources a podcast that offers innovative solutions for education challenges. We bring together research, expert insights, and practical resources to help teachers and parents tackle everything from classroom management to learning differences. Every episode focuses on turning common education challenges into opportunities for growth. Whether you're a teacher looking for fresh ideas or a parents wanting to better support your child's learning, we've got actionable strategies you can use right away.
The podcast's music was created by Brandon Picciolini, her son, from The Lonesome Family Band. You can explore more of his work on Instagram.
The Brighter Side of Education: Research, Innovation & Resources
Gen Z College & Career Readiness | Helping Students Plan Their Future with Loper
Post-secondary planning doesn't need to be overwhelming for students, parents, or educators. Sam Bernstein shares how his app Loper is transforming this crucial process into a personalized, engaging experience that meets Gen Z where they are.
• Only 74% of Gen Z teens plan to attend college, down from previous generations
• Students increasingly interested in staying at home or exploring alternatives to four-year colleges
• College rankings create unnecessary stress and don't account for individual fit
• Traditional planning tools rely on outdated checklists that don't engage today's students
• Average school counselor manages 400+ students, making personalized guidance difficult
• Loper offers a free, TikTok-style interface that helps students discover options aligned with their interests
• 90% of Loper users apply to schools they match with, two-thirds discover these schools on the app
• First-generation students benefit from Loper's approach that assumes no prior knowledge
• Parents and educators should celebrate the process, not just outcomes
• Specific questions about interests work better than generic "how's it going" check-ins
Download Loper for free to help students explore personalized post-high school options in a format that resonates with them.
If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, email me at lisa@drlisahassler.com or visit www.drlisahassler.com. Subscribe, tell a friend, and consider becoming a supporter by clicking the link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2048018/support.
The music in this podcast was written and performed by Brandon Picciolini of the Lonesome Family Band. Visit and follow him on Instagram.
What if planning for life after high school didn't have to feel so overwhelming for students, parents or educators? Today, we explore how rethinking post-secondary planning can lead to more personalized, confident and future-ready decisions. Welcome to the brighter side of education, research, innovation and resources. I'm your host, dr Lisa Hassler, here to enlighten and brighten the classrooms in America through focused conversation on important topics in education. In each episode, I discuss problems we, as teachers and parents, are facing and what people are doing in their communities to fix it. What are the variables and how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes?
Dr. Lisa Hassler:Helping students plan for life after high school is one of the most important and increasingly complex tasks we face as educators and parents. While college has traditionally been seen as the next step, that's changing. A 2023 Gallup and Walton Family Foundation survey found that just 74% of Gen Z teens plan to attend college, a noticeable drop from prior generations. Many are asking deeper questions what's the right path for me? What does success look like? And, at the same time, the process itself is deeply stressful. According to the Princeton Review, over 70% of students experience high stress during college planning. For many, it feels like a checklist with no clear direction, especially when resources are stretched thin. The average school counselor is, unfortunately, 400 students, making individualized guidance a challenge, and there's a disconnect in how we communicate these options. Gen Z interacts with the world through mobile-first, fast-paced, highly visual platforms, yet most planning tools are still static and outdated, leaving students disengaged from the process entirely.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:What emerges is a clear need a more personalized, relevant approach to helping students explore their futures, one that reflects who they are, how they learn and where they wanna go.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:Today's guest, sam Bernstein, offers just that an innovative solution designed to meet students where they are and guide them towards what's next with clarity and confidence. Sam co-founded Loper, a free app that helps students explore their best fit options after high school. Loper is designed to feel more like TikTok than a college brochure engaging, personalized and built around how Gen Z discovers information. Sam's work has already guided nearly 200,000 students towards educational and career paths that align with both their interests and goals. His mission is simple but powerful to give students the tools and confidence to make informed decisions about their futures, without the pressure of prestige or outdated planning methods. Today, we'll hear how Loper is transforming post-secondary planning and what educators and parents can do to better support students in this journey. Sam, welcome to the Brighter Side of Education. I'm really excited to talk to you about Loper and all the great things that it is doing for students looking ahead at their futures after high school.
Sam Bernstein:Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me Really excited for the conversation.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:So what kind of trends are you noticing that are emerging in how students today are thinking about life after high school?
Sam Bernstein:Yeah, I think there's a few really interesting ones on our side that we're seeing, and one, I think, comes in some ways directly out of the pandemic and then maybe some lingering effects, but I think, also just a response to some of the realities of higher education in that increasing number of students interested in staying at home.
Sam Bernstein:And when I say staying at home, not just looking at options locally, but actually saying no, I'm not as interested in going on campus, living in the dorms, I'd rather either save money or be around my parents, be around my family and actually looking to live at home as well as explore options outside of four-year college, which I think there's a lot of different angles on, that cost being one of them, and it ties into the second point that I have around the trends that we're seeing but so interesting in speaking with high school students and seeing their interests that they express on Loper's mobile app, we have students who are saying I do want to look at the trades, I do want to look at apprenticeship options and looking to earn money save money either side of the equation.
Sam Bernstein:So one interesting trend that we're seeing, and I think some of that comes from a shift to online learning and maybe a little bit of a greater skepticism for the traditional higher ed experience. But the other piece I think that ties in is such a future-driven generation and I think you really have an audience thinking about life after high school who aren't just thinking, hey, what am I going to do for the next year when I enroll in college. They're really trying to map back from where am I going to be in four years or five years? And in many ways, far, far more thoughtful than I was going through the college process, post-high school process, far more thoughtful than my friends were going through it as well.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:Yeah, I have noticed also that a lot of them are looking at. When you were talking about the trades, I think that's nice to see that people are looking at what their interest is. And then you know, how do I get what I want? And is college always the path for that? And sometimes it's not, Sometimes it is a different route and also we need these trades.
Sam Bernstein:So I mean, oh, you're not going to a four-year college or you're not going to this four-year college. The more that we can shift away from that, the more that we can focus on how are we putting students on paths that make themselves happy, that offer them high-paying, viable careers, and that's really keeping the student at the center and rather than everyone else's opinion around them and there are a lot of those. That's something that we're excited to be a part of, but I'd say it is encouraging to see students taking that approach as a whole.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:Yeah, you talked about the shift of mindset and I think that there is a lot of mindset about the prestige. You want to go to this college with this name. That's how you're going to get ahead. So what kinds of things do you think that we need to be doing to shift that mindset around college prestige, and how do you think educators and parents can help students focus more on the fit and not so much the prestige?
Sam Bernstein:Yeah, I think the first thing that comes to mind is just calling out the absurdity of rankings as a whole, and there's a bunch of different ways. I probably don't have any original thought on this that hasn't been shared elsewhere, but it just. It's very human to like to have things in an ordered list and be able to look okay, this is number one, this is two, and so on, but how, amongst thousands of colleges, can you actually make any type of ranking that has viability for everyone? So, the more that we can call out the absurdity and I think, remember that this is a stressful process for teens and they might be clinging to these rankings and finding different ways. I think, instead of just saying, oh, ignore the rankings and leaving it at that, maybe bring up the fact that for that audience of students and the estimate is about 10% of students in the country are caught up in the race for highly selective admissions For that audience of students calling out, you're starting to break down and think about okay, if you're really fixated on attending an Ivy League school, probably for the sake of it being an Ivy League institution, that gentle nudge of hey, only 10,000 students in a given year are actually going to these. Do you really think it's only those 10,000 students who have successful outcomes and so on? And where I would go off from? That is trying to get tangible with storytelling here.
Sam Bernstein:But I will often hear parents say I could never get into blank college today that I went to, and that, while I think it expresses the meaning and intent, is empathy.
Sam Bernstein:I think a student just hears that and it's like you don't get it, you don't get the process today and it's written off. And I think looking for more tangible examples of, hey, this person, family friend, someone who lives down the block, cousin, whoever it is went to blank school. Look at what they're doing now. There's not a one size fits all path and that's where I always turn to my older brother. Here's a great example Went to Marquette University, good school, not going to be one that necessarily is number eight on the US News and World Report rankings list, but man, he's doing really, really well, great career in enterprise sales and met some lifelong friends there, and I know a lot of his friends I could point to a dozen more of them who have great past, great careers, met some of their best friends, and those examples I think can illuminate for a student, there is this something that I can hold on to. That isn't a Harvard grad who went on to do these different things with their life.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:The value of the education also comes with how much they're putting into it. I went to Moraine Valley Community College back in the day I don't think it's called it anymore. Some of my most amazing stories come from the environmental teacher that was there extremely passionate, and I went to University of St Francis out there in Joliet for my undergrad, for my teaching certificate, and I will swear it is one of the best teaching colleges. The preparation is very rigorous and they're not ranked as any like top 10 or anything, but very, very good education. So I always stand by you know the professors put their heart into it and you're going to find good education all over.
Sam Bernstein:Absolutely no, and it's a great college. They're definitely a hidden gem in one of those and I think what we're trying to unloat is help to expose those of. Hey, you've got a student who's interested in education, maybe wants to be near a city, what a great fit for University of St Francis and having access to Chicago both as an undergrad and afterwards. And there are examples of those types of institutions for different types of students all across the country. Unfortunately, it's really hard for an individual to go expose that to a high school student. You shouldn't all be an expert on these colleges. It's where we hope technology can help, but really just a different paradigm and approach to the process can help students.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:I liked how you talked about being an expert in all of these colleges. There is a lot out there that you just don't know until people go for college visits, college tours that can not only be very time consuming but then limited, because you only have so much time to take off of school, plus the amount of money that it takes to go and fly and stay in hotels and to see these, you know, out of state campuses. So not everybody has that opportunity, and so when you talk about fit, what do you? What do you mean by that?
Sam Bernstein:It's about the student first and foremost, and we have to start with the student and not the institution and we can define fit in terms of your higher level preferences. And I think there are some things that are. I almost view them as must-haves or checkboxes where, right, I really want to be in a certain part of the country or it really has to have this one specific major program, or else it's not going to work. Those are almost filters. But I think if you and this is truly what's happening on Loper and I think where other actual college search tools will stop is great, it filters down. And then there's 75 schools that could be shown to a student and could be shown and it's well, how do I comb through those?
Sam Bernstein:And it's starting to think about what can feel in some cases like silly questions of, hey, what do you like to do for fun on the weekends? What are your favorite activities? It can be questions around what do you want for your campus experience? What type of clubs do you want to join? And do you imagine you're living in the dorm for three or four years? Do you want to live in an off-campus apartment?
Sam Bernstein:And continue to go down that line, and we ask close to a thousand different what we call prompts on Loper, which is how I think about this fit process and as students are reacting to what they are and aren't interested in. It's really going for that holistic definition of a student's interests. And what I love to hear from students is something along the lines of you know, I didn't even know I could ask about blank and tie into college, but just being presented with it can force the question and sometimes in those follow on questions for fit where you start to dive a little bit deeper and you just realize, wow, what's really going to make me happy and stand out as something that no one else might care might be really small, that matters that. Those are those elements of fit for me.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:We see such a high rate of freshmen dropping out, and part of that is how do they feel in that environment? You don't know how the environment is until you actually arrive there. You're going through the process and so having a better fit, like you're talking about. What do you like to do for fun? What do you want to be surrounded by? What kind of clubs are you want to be engaged in? It's those activities that make the connections, that make them happy, that will make them want to stay in school longer. So in a thousand questions, that's pretty amazing. What's missing in traditional planning tools and how did that influence your vision for Loper?
Sam Bernstein:I think the approach towards the process. We think about it as we need heavy structure and these tools and how do we figure out shortcuts in the system. And as we start talking about it, I just imagine high school students getting more and more stressed and that's something I'm very empathetic of as I think back on my own process, on my friend's process as well, where I think we end up turning this into and it is a very important decision, don't get me wrong but we turn it into the important decision and the critical process where, yes, it's very important but, as we talked about a little bit earlier, there are so many great options out there. There is not a one perfect option. We aren't trying to get down to one of one. We're trying to end up finding what these different, viable and exciting paths are.
Sam Bernstein:And it's this really exciting transition point, at least here in the US, is in some ways, kind of the transition to adulthood, or at least frame that way, and that should be fun, that should be exciting, and that's what we wanted to introduce with Loper is just being a little more stress-free and more about what's next. How can I be excited for whatever that path is, and it's not about what my friends are doing or what someone tells me I should be doing, but what I'm interested in doing, and it's part of why we really wanted to build on mobile. We wanted to make this more carefree, more about how students are consuming content naturally today, and try and facilitate more of that like light bulb moment that has, instead of a parent or an educator turned to a student and saying, well, lisa, what are you interested in? Have you thought about this, where it's actually a student going forward and saying I just learned about this and you get that kind of moment of joy and discovery. That's what we're hoping to see more of.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:How does Loper turn that checklist style planning process into a more student driven experience? You're talking about something that's very, maybe, mundane or structured into something that Gen Z is more attracted to, more visual appeal, something that's less static.
Sam Bernstein:Yeah, so we have, in terms of that visual and interactive nature or having students react to what we call prompts within a feed on the app. It looks a little bit like sometimes I hate saying it, but a little bit like a TikTok feed or Instagram Reels feed, but I think it can help illuminate what that interface looks like for students and this can be content about majors, content about clubs, as I mentioned, on campus, facilities on campus, different careers that you're interested in. We have video content. Some of this content comes from colleges themselves that we'll incorporate in the app, and then a lot of just general introspection questions and as students are reacting. That's what is powering our personalized matches and we want to again turn this into something that's proactive and coming from students there where it's not.
Sam Bernstein:Here's your two-page PDF of things you need to check off and do over the next three to six months. Focus more on building that excitement and it turns into okay, I'm interested in these pieces and I'm starting to learn about these schools and I can see personalized detail on why it's a good fit for me and then having that checklist almost flow from that. And yes, there's absolutely things in kind of each grade within high school that you need to be doing and really for freshmen and sophomores it's have fun, focus on your grades, figure out what you're interested in, but you check those boxes and then having the checklist and the process flow from the interests and discovery and the excitement there and as a product. We launched an application center on the app last year and this year we're going to be expanding that into a web interface as well where we can actually help students give their parents and other advisors and their life visibility into not just this list of schools and their interests but then some of those dates and deadlines and more checklist focused options. You've got visibility there as well.
Sam Bernstein:It's not all about the checklist, but then you have the student excited and starting to go through it and then for, I think, parents and every single parent I talk to, it's a two out of 10, three out of 10 in confidence level for the process in ways that we can out get that Not going to pretend we'll get it to a 10, but we can get that to a six or seven out of 10. And there's just a little bit more comfort that your child, your students, going through this the right way and that they aren't going to miss something that should be on a checklist, but that the entire thing isn't just a checklist. That is pulling teeth to get them to do. We're trying to walk. I don't know if it's a tight rope, but definitely find that right balance as students go through the process.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:That's helpful because there's a lot of steps within this process and there's only, like usually, one guidance counselor at a school, a lot of students having to depend on them. So anything that is out there that will help excite the kids to be more engaged in this process and to be more independent and student driven. Really ratio something in that ballpark.
Sam Bernstein:It's just there's not enough counselors. You're stretched so thin. If you're lucky you might get 15 minutes with a student and we want to help make that 15 minutes count. But also recognize there's a whole lot that you need to get done when talking to a student and sometimes pieces that are really important or designed to get students excited in the process. It just doesn't fit for that school day or that meeting. So we can support counselors in any way or just be a resource in their toolkit to share with students. That's an amazing outcome for us and definitely one of the reasons we wanted to start LOPA in the first place.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:You talked a little bit about vocation schools, so this is not just universities for career paths. What kind of options are you giving kids?
Sam Bernstein:We're looking at different buckets, ranging from gap year programs and even bringing some summer programs on to Loper as well for that transition period. But then, thinking about, you have community colleges, trade schools, vocational schools, apprenticeships, direct to workforce pathways and a couple that come to mind here Lead for America. It's a civic, service-based career pathway. You have maybe 20 different local sites where they're helping match students, they're working within local government and then for those students many of them are going to college afterwards. You have this amazing work experience where you're working full-time, you're earning a salary, you're getting real hands-on experience. Amazing to have that perspective going into college. But then, for a subset of those students as well, they either find something they're really passionate about, decide college isn't the right time for them, isn't right for them, and they continue working towards that.
Sam Bernstein:There are some amazing programs and what we want to think about doing for students who are looking outside of the college space is be a platform of trust where, if you learn about an opportunity on Loper, you have some degree of trust that this is a viable pathway, that you're going to get some type of training, upskilling experience, life experience that has value, and that is something that I think is so, so hard for anyone.
Sam Bernstein:It's hard enough when you're looking within four-year colleges to find that good fit and that viability, but it's almost like the Wild West when you start to look outside of it and it's just feels like students and families as a whole are yearning for that degree of extra thumbs up, of just like okay, this is, this does make sense for me and is good to pursue. So that's what we're hoping to bring to the platform and, as we grow and we expand those options on Loper, the ability to compare a four-year college from a two-year college, from a trade school from a direct workforce option, all side by side, and have that personalization to it. I think we're still building towards that. That's what excites me the most, because I really don't see a single way out there for someone to actually make that comparison, because they aren't apples to apples. They are very different and it's going to be different for every single person and evaluating which of those options as a whole is right for them, let alone the individual pathways within those kind of higher level options.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:You've been doing this for three years. Have you had any feedback from anyone who has gone through the process and what have they been saying about it?
Sam Bernstein:We're really proud of a 4.8 star rating on the App Store with, I think, coming past 1,200 reviews now. And then when we survey our users, 90% are applying to a match that they have on Loper and I think two thirds of them actually first discovered that on Loper as well. So that's kind of the closing feedback loops on the overall process that we really like to turn to from that objective data. But I think the subjective side is what we hear from students when we talk to them is they've never had this type of personalized experience where it's hey, this actually took the time to get to know me and this being loper.
Sam Bernstein:What is surprised or encouraged you about how students who are showing a willingness to explore options they hadn't heard of, to come back to that prestige piece from earlier in the conversation and that two-thirds applying to a school that they discovered on Loper Really exciting to me. I think it speaks some to our audience and our user base skewing a little bit younger, a little bit more first-gen than the country as a whole, and exciting for us from the accessibility piece as well. So also encouraging on both of those are seeing students come onto the app who may not have within their families, that the context of a college going culture. There's this really like special trust that comes from, you know, whether it's a human being or a product, giving you almost that second thumbs up there for the option, and so that's been encouraging, you know, the belief in students that they're, you know, at least willing to consider something new.
Sam Bernstein:Then I think one of the there's quite a few surprising pieces that I've seen, but one is actually we have students who will come on, you know, a year later and that's come from the tour having the product live for almost three years now, where you have your unique IDs and you can kind of see okay, when did someone first create an account? If we're looking at data on our side, it's like, oh, wow, we had usage from X number of people who first or last logged on six plus months ago or 12 months ago, and we want to have a more unified experience for them in those gaps. But to have someone who says, you know, as a sophomore, I use this product and I learned about some schools, and then, you know, my opinions have changed, my interests have changed. Maybe I just want to start all over again to come back. That's, you know, both encouraging and surprising.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:You talked about first generation students that are using the app. How does Loper help close those access gaps or support equity in future planning?
Sam Bernstein:Yeah, the first is it's a free mobile app and I probably should have said that and shouted it from the rooftops earlier on this podcast. But we're free, free for students, free for counselors who want to use the product with students, free for parents using it with students. But that's just kind of the baseline. We want to up the level of free resources for students that are out there. And then the next piece is that we try and really assume no knowledge in going through the process. And if we explain a term like living learning community or themed housing and we show that as a prompt for a student to react to, you probably have no idea. Heck, I would have had no idea what that is, and my older brother had gone to college two or three years before me. Heck, I would have had no idea what that is, and my older brother had gone to college two or three years before me.
Sam Bernstein:And we want to explain whether it's a term like that or something that feels more basic, like liberal arts college and what that is Just having the opportunity to hit a button, learn more and it's one of the nice pieces of technology where I think it's very easy to feel self-conscious when you bring that up to a human. When you're asking a question that you think you should know whether or not that's true, just to have that presented to you in a way that there's not even a thought of asking a question or clicking to learn more. That's important for us because if we start to make assumptions about what students know, going in the process or act like you should already know this, there's nothing more discouraging than that. And there's nothing more discouraging than feeling like you're behind in the process when realistically, as a first-gen student, you have the feeling that you're behind from day one, just from nature of not having other people in your family having attended higher education. So that's very, very important for us in assuming no knowledge.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:That's a great thing, because there's been so many times when someone has said an acronym around me and I've thought I have no idea what that means. These acronyms get very casually thrown around and it's assumed that everybody knows what they are and they don't, and so you do leave people out when you start assuming, and so I'm glad that you addressed that, because it feels inclusive versus exclusive when you do that.
Sam Bernstein:That's our goal and I think for any parents, counselors, educators, listening think about that feeling you have when your students are using acronyms or slang and you don't know what it is and you're feeling old and left out. Just think about that feeling on the inverse when you start using these terms or acronyms for your students.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:So that little bit of empathy is very helpful, definitely, yeah. Well, what kind of advice would you give to educators or parents who want to support students without creating that additional pressure when it comes to applying for colleges or life after high school planning?
Sam Bernstein:Yeah, I think, at risk of stating the obvious, I would certainly say download LOAPER, check it out for yourself, show it to students. We do want to be a tool in that process, but one of the general pieces that I think about is remembering that your words really have power here in this process. And this is already something that students are turning into being more stressful, bigger, more personal in many ways than it really is. And a comment that sounds nice in your head may be taken in a much different way than you intend it, just because they've wrapped up so much in that process. And coming off of that, I think that sometimes those comments of how is it going in the really general comments, are the worst.
Sam Bernstein:But being able to be a little bit more specific in questions about a specific interest or a specific school or a specific part of the process, that can sometimes facilitate more general conversations where it feels easier to respond to that than that question of how's it going can sometimes just be frozen deer in headlights. What do I do? What do I say? And just remember that students have baked so much into that process, which leads to the final point I'd make, which is just to celebrate the inputs and not just the outputs here. Sometimes we're waiting until acceptances are coming out to say congratulations or good job, especially if you have students who are applying to those highly selective schools where, realistically, it's a numbers game in many ways and just the fact that you're in that position to have a chance to attend one of those schools is something worth celebrating. And I think it means a lot for students when they're hearing that in September, october, november and not just sitting there hoping that they might hear that from someone in March or April.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:It's like a let's celebrate. You turned in some applications. That's a big thing. Let's go. You know, have a pizza.
Sam Bernstein:I don't know, that's a big thing, let's go you know, have a pizza.
Sam Bernstein:I don't know. So enjoy the process. Yeah, enjoy the process and heck your senior year of high school for you, and you know, I think it's sometimes you get the healthy cynic as the adult where it's, you kind of forget of like, oh well, it's just one building block on. You know this greater life path and career path, man, if you're 18 years, 17, 18 years old, that's all you know. This greater life path and career path, man, if you're 18 years, 17, 18 years old, that's all you know. You know 17, 18 years, and it's nothing insignificant to be in that position and to be going through this process in the first place.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:Well, great advice, and thank you so much, Sam, for coming on the show and for sharing all of your insights and for creating Glover to help fill the gap. Support our guidance counselors, support our parents, our students, most of all.
Sam Bernstein:Thank you so much for having me and really excited to see where the product goes in the next year.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:If today's conversation sparked new ideas or shifted how you view post-secondary planning. I encourage you to explore tools and conversations that center student voice and values. When we meet students where they are, we open the door to futures that truly are their own. If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, you can email me at lisa at drlisahasslercom, or visit my website at wwwdrlisahasslercom and send me a message. If you like this podcast, subscribe and tell a friend. The more people that know, the bigger impact it will have. And if you find value to the content in this podcast, consider becoming a supporter by clicking on the supporter link in the show notes. It is the mission of this podcast to shine light on the good in education so that it spreads, affecting positive change. So let's keep working together to find solutions that focus on our children's success.
