
Khan Academy Founder Proposes a New Type of College - ilamont
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/khan-academy-founder-proposes-a-new-type-of-college/41160?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
======
shadowfiend
And the pendulum swings back.

While there are differences, fundamentally the proposition of mentors,
internship-based learning, and living on site is not that different from
apprenticeships. There's a wider exposure to ideas, perhaps (because maybe you
jump between internships instead of staying with one), but at its most basic
level the proposed idea is training people to do jobs instead of trying to
expand their thinking minds. Yes, there's lip service given to seminars, but
it's evident in the quote (“Traditional universities… list the Nobel
laureates… ours… would list the… entrepreneurs, inventors, and executives”)
that academics are held in a certain amount of contempt.

Let me be clear: I don't think there's anything wrong with this vision. This
approach would probably be a success. It may be needed. The problem is this:
somehow we mutated universities into a place where everyone goes in order to
get a job. I think we benefit from having more people being educated at a
university level, but that benefit is not purely practical. I don't think the
point of getting higher education is getting a job. I think it's an extension
of the same reason we go to school: because an educated population drives
knowledge further. Because when a large part of the population gets a
Bachelors of some sort, they can reason better. And because when there are
more people at that knowledge level, a larger part than before gets a Ph.D.
And that helps society and humanity move forward faster.

There's a tension right now between the university as a place to expand your
mind and learn for the sake of learning and the university as a place where
you prepare for a job. I think it's a good idea to play with that tension and
that balance, and see what balance leads to better results in what way. But I
think there is absolutely a place for universities as they are today, and I
think their existence is part of what has driven us forward at the frenetic
pace that we have seen the last several decades.

~~~
jfarmer
Caveat: I'm a co-founder of Dev Bootcamp (<http://devbootcamp.com>), so I have
strong opinions. :D

"The problem is this: somehow we mutated universities into a place where
everyone goes in order to get a job."

No, I don't think that's fair. There's no "we." Everyone -- students and
institutions -- have a different answer to "what is the purpose of an
education?"

In the US, we've been experimenting with the full spectrum of answers for the
last 150 years.

For some students "an education" _is_ the promise of livelihood, for others
it's about needs higher up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Some reasons people
"go to school":

* Access to expertise and high-quality curriculum

* Ability to connect with similarly-motivated people over an extended period of time (think: MBAs)

* Credentialing, or in general access to a certificate valued by the market

* Cultivating their own internal or external life, becoming a better person, citizen, etc.

None of these are better or worse than others, however these mandates often
contradict each other.

I studied mathematics and linguistics at the University of Chicago and the
thing I loved most about the university was that it had a very strong opinion
about how to answer “What is an education?” That answer wasn’t for everyone,
but the school was comfortable not being “for everyone.”

In my mind, by taking care of a small subset of those mandates, Dev Bootcamp
helps free universities to have a strong opinion about that question again.

Sal Khan wants to call it a "new kind of college," which confuses things a
bit. To me it's about understanding all the ways people answer the question
"What is an education?" and unbundling those needs.

~~~
saraid216
> No, I don't think that's fair. There's no "we." Everyone -- students and
> institutions -- have a different answer to "what is the purpose of an
> education?"

We have different answers, to be sure, but how is that answer expressed? The
only thing my parents cared about when I chose my college and major was, "What
kind of job can you get with that degree?" I was on good terms with the
faculty and staff of my major and they felt compelled to acknowledge that most
people worry about having a job when they leave school and thus, that faculty
and staff felt obligated to explain the marketability of their taught skills,
even if they had to go digging and networking with employers to find such
answers.

You claim that, in the US, we have been experimenting for 150 years, but you
only provide as an example your own, personal anecdotal experience as someone
who has become a co-founding entrepreneur. You don't even provide UChicago's
answer (which, had you done so, would have been an invitation for other alumni
to disagree with you).

I don't see any meaningful experimentation happening. I see universities
struggling to be everything to everyone, and not really having any idea how to
do it anymore, except to provide for the lowest common denominator: the need
to make a living after parental support runs out.

~~~
jfarmer
Well, first, this

"I see universities struggling to be everything to everyone"

was exactly my point. :D

For some people, education is about "jobs," for others its about other things,
and as a result universities have dozens of conflicting mandates.

I was rejecting the idea that we've somehow converged, as a society or
whatever, on a consensus that education = jobs. That was not my educational
experience. That's not the educational experience of people who attended an
Ivy League school.

But I grew up poor and rural, so I know the flip side...viscerally. I meant to
draw attention to exactly your point, that we've set up a situation where
universities are directionless because we've asked them to be everything to
everyone.

DBC is not everything to everyone. We hope that DBC will make it easier for
universities to stop trying to be everything to everyone, too.

"You claim that, in the US, we have been experimenting for 150 years, but you
only provide as an example your own, personal anecdotal experience as someone
who has become a co-founding entrepreneur."

Happy to provide resources. :)

I'd start with Diane Ravitch's "Left Back: A Century of Battles over School
Reform"

[http://www.amazon.com/Left-Back-Century-Battles-
School/dp/07...](http://www.amazon.com/Left-Back-Century-Battles-
School/dp/0743203267)

A video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T7jpyAG44k>

If you want names, I'd read up on the history of post-Civil War sociology,
psychology, and philosophy in the US, especially the pragmatist tradition.

Start with John Dewey and William Torrey Harris (for a counterpoint to Dewey).

Here's a William Torrey Harris quote: "The great purpose of school can be
realized better in dark, airless, ugly places ... It is to master the physical
self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to
withdraw from the external world."

Here's John Dewey: "The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas
or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the
community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist
him in properly responding to these influences"

Also read up on Booker T. Washington and "industrial education."

Literally every point everyone has been making in this thread -- myself
included -- was also being made by educational thinkers 100-150 years ago.

~~~
saraid216
> I'd start with Diane Ravitch's "Left Back: A Century of Battles over School
> Reform"

I'll do that. I haven't read any of Ravitch's work directly yet, and enough
time has passed since I heard her speak that I don't remember her position
reliably anymore.

> Start with John Dewey and William Torrey Harris (for a counterpoint to
> Dewey).

I'm a fairly huge fan of John Dewey. I only barely hold back from calling
myself a philosophical pragmatist in Dewey's tradition. On the other hand, I
kinda recognize Harris' notion as a tradition I'd reject; Wikipedia's
characterization of his supporters' arguments suggests that there isn't
anything really useful in his ideas that doesn't require stripping it bare
first. :P

> Literally every point everyone has been making in this thread -- myself
> included -- was also being made by educational thinkers 100-150 years ago.

But this is not experimentation. There is a difference between a thought
experiment and an _actual_ experiment. Schrodinger did not actually put a cat
in a box and mysteriously wave his hands to express the quantum uncertainty of
its aliveness.

Yes, we have some tiny movements like Montessori schools or project-based
learning or Quest to Learn or KIPP's character training or charter schools and
so on and so on, but they make such an infinitesimal impact and are often so
incomparable that it doesn't make sense to call it "experimentation". The fact
that Will Wright, Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos are all Montessori graduates,
for instance, gets noticed sometimes but also gets _mocked_ a portion of that.
(That is, the term "Montessori graduate" is sometimes used derogatorily.)

> I meant to draw attention to exactly your point, that we've set up a
> situation where universities are directionless because we've asked them to
> be everything to everyone.

I don't think that the answer is to unbundle it, though. That's an easy, dare
I say Silicon-Valley-esque response to a difficult and multifarious beast, but
it's not necessarily the right one. I think that it'd be worthwhile to shed
some of those things, yes, but for their invalidity or overgeneralizations on
their own merits, rather than because they detract from a university's
capacity to be itself.

I am working on an answer myself, naturally... but I've so far declined to try
to untangle the nature of a university on my own. It feels like putting the
cart before the horse to do so. I've mostly held to a single, simple
principle: a university experience should be optional. If people feel
compelled to go to a university after some particular amount of basic
education, such as high school, then the problems of a university are
symptoms, not causes.

~~~
jfarmer
I've clearly pushed some kind of button for you. I apologize.

I hope you enjoy the reading I suggested.

------
larrys
"Mr. Khan conjures an image of a new campus in Silicon Valley where students
would spend their days working on internships and projects with mentors, and
would continue their education with self-paced learning similar to that of
Khan Academy."

Because of course the entire world centers around SV and tech. And even if you
are just trying to work as a manager at a regional chain in Kansas there is
something you can learn from Silicon Valley.

"Mr. Khan writes that he admires the work of Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal,
who set up a fellowship program for college students to drop out and pursue
entrepreneurship with the help of financial backing and mentors"

The entire world is not cut out to be entrepreneurial. In fact most of the
world isn't and can't (not everybody can be a chief we do need indians as the
saying goes).

Noting also that Kahn takes the traditional route of publishing a traditional
printed book (by Hachette Book Group) to get his views across. And will most
likely go on a typical book tour and do the usual media publicity route.
Nothing wrong with that. Just like there is value in traditional universities
and things like Kahn "Academy".

~~~
Moto7451
I think your criticism isn't completely fair. I'm fairly certain that the
narrow design and location of his thought experiment is because he is most
familiar with the finance and tech industries (His degrees are in Math, EE,
and Business). He's clearly spent a lot of time in school and is familiar with
his pain points and would like to fix them (for better or worse)[1].

If I was in the same position I wouldn't bother expunging my ideas about what
would make a better art school because I'm clueless about art schools.

[1]My experience has been that Community Colleges already do a lot of what
he's suggesting (at least mine did) and I doubt his university style campus
could compete on cost with a CC.

edit: forgot that asterisks italicize text.

~~~
btilly
_My experience has been that Community Colleges already do a lot of what he's
suggesting (at least mine did) and I doubt his university style campus could
compete on cost with a CC._

I bet it is the other way around.

Smart potential mentors know the value of finding good people early, I don't
think that will cost nearly as much as you would fear.

------
sridhar_vembu
_In a chapter titled “What College Could Be Like,” Mr. Khan conjures an image
of a new campus in Silicon Valley where students would spend their days
working on internships and projects with mentors, and would continue their
education with self-paced learning similar to that of Khan Academy. The
students would attend ungraded seminars at night on art and literature, and
the faculty would consist of professionals the students would work with as
well as traditional professors._ \--

This is what we do in what we call "Zoho University" within our company. We
hire students out of high school, and they go through a program that has a mix
of classroom instruction focused on extensive programming exercises with a
heavy dose of interaction with people building products. Basically education
combined with context - why should I learn this? Why is this relevant?

This comes from my own personal experience doing a PhD in Electrical
Engineering from Princeton. I would rate my PhD as idle mathematical game
playing. That would have been OK as a hobby, I just wish I had not gifted 4
years of life to its pursuit. And I definitely take issue with the fact that
this was tax-payer-funded pursuit - in fact, tax-payer-funding has something
to do with how abstract and detached from reality these things get. So I ended
up repudiating the whole thing. Zoho University is my atonement.

I passionately believe that the vast majority of students (myself included)
would get far more value from this type of a "contextual education" program.

~~~
danielharan
I am currently volunteer teaching in a high school and found a few bright ones
that are eager to learn. What's the best way for them to apply?

~~~
sridhar_vembu
Please send me mail svembu at google's email.

------
ender7
Here is the crux of the matter:

 _In the book, Mr. Khan also advocates for a separation of universities’
teaching and credentialing roles, arguing that if students could take
internationally recognized assessments to prove themselves, the playing field
would be leveled between students pursuing different forms of higher
education._

Removing our heavy reliance on higher ed credentialling seems central to his
idea, and yet the proposed solution is simply "internationally recognized
assessments", which sounds suspiciously like "standardized tests" to me.

Sadly, many professions are not well-evaluated by standardized testing. This
is not for lack of trying -- we already have the GRT and all of its related
subject tests, plus the entire raft of tech-related certifications that aren't
worth the paper they're printed on (remember "A+ certification"?). Grad
schools look at GRT results, but usually only to make sure you didn't
completely bomb the test.

This is the hard part, and will require a lot of careful though to untangle.

~~~
frankc
Standardized tests don't have to be multiple-choice tests from a question
bank, though. You can have practical sections, like in the CCIE. You can have
long-form scenarios you have to analyze like on part 3 of the CFA. You can
have the exams only given on specific dates at specific times of the years, as
is done on several exams, so that the questions are always secret and not
reused.

The highest quality certifications comnbine more than one of the above
techniques. For instance, you might make phase 1 be just a multiple choice
test. This mainly acts as a filter so that not too many resources are wasted
scoring the more comprehensive sections for test takers who aren't really
serious. Then phase 2 testers might take a more open-ended test with essays,
etc. Finally, people who pass phase 2 might have some kind of practical,
similar to medical boards or the network building in the CCIE.

This kind of process might not be cheap, either. A lot of people's time are
involved in creating, administering and grading of this kind of rigorous
testing process, but it even if it costs $2000 - $3000, it is still much
cheaper than a university. It is still much more egalitarian as it is not open
only to the chosen few.

------
thejteam
My daughter(6 years old) asked me the other night at dinner when she would
learn which which berries in the forest are poisonous, high school or college.
I explained to her that she would not be learning these things in school, she
will have to learn them from other places like books. At which point she tells
me she is not sure she wants to go to college if she isn't going to be
learning important things.

~~~
klibertp
Even if not real, this anecdote is cute. The sad truth, however, is that she
_will_ learn from other places that without a college degree she is less
likely to be employed...

------
aaronharnly
I like the suggestion to separate instruction from credentialing, allowing
excellent students anywhere to prove themselves as such.

However, I strongly object to the business idolatry expressed: trading Nobel
laureates for "entrepreneurs, inventors, and executives." Why not both?

~~~
edtechdev
Separating instruction and credentialing (and a third item - learner support)
has been suggested by others before
(<http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/768/1414> ), and I do
think it is a good idea in theory.

But look at where it has already been done before, like Microsoft or IT
certifications. They are okay, but don't really have a whole lot of value
because it is too easy to 'cram for the exam' - there are even services in
many countries that help with this. I wouldn't want to hire someone solely
based on their certificates or badges - I'd want to see a portfolio of their
work, hear from previous co-workers, and of course speak with the person to
see about their skills in communicating and working with others.

And outside of some technical skills or rote knowledge, most skills can't be
so easily measured by test questions.

A better argument for a 'new college' would highlight how right now a college
degree doesn't really indicate what a person has learned, and the evidence
points to not much actual learning happening in college (see Academically
Adrift:
[http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_la...](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_large_numbers_of_college_students_don_t_learn_much)).
This isn't surprising since most professors aren't trained in how to teach
effectively and properly support learning, and neither are most in industry,
either.

~~~
ontheinternets
All lawyers take the bar exam. No law firm or government organization asks for
a lawyer's score on the bar. They only thing that matters is your GPA, given
to you by your own university. Law GPAs are heavily curved; most students can
only receive A's or B's. Everyone knows that law schools regularly adjust
their curves to give their students higher GPAs and therefore an advantage in
the hiring market. Still, nothing changes in legal education. If anything,
legal education changes less than other forms.

------
aidenn0
“Traditional universities proudly list the Nobel laureates they have on campus
(most of whom have little to no interaction with students),”

They only have little to no interaction with students because students are
stupid. When I started college, I was a physics major. After one year, I found
the field of solid-state physics particularly interesting. I found out that
Prof. Albert Overhauser was at Purdue (if you don't know who he is, just know
that there is a very important spin-transfer effect named after him), and it
turns out there were many opportunities to interact with him that almost
nobody took advantage of.

Consider office hours alone: You've signed up for a lecture from a smart and
talented person in a field you are interested in, and they are paid to set
aside time to talk to you. If you are most students, you don't bother to go.

------
shortlived
He's spot on I think.

    
    
       * mentors
       * hands on experience and dives into theory/standard learning
       * live "on campus"
    

I was lucky to have all of these at a standard liberal arts college, albeit
not in the exact doses that Khan is talking about. It made my education great.

~~~
Osmium
One of the great successes of the university I attended were several weekly
hour-long two-on-one sessions (two students, one supervisor) with either a
professor or a grad student, talking about that week's lectures.

The regularity and length of them allowed a relationship to be built up over
the course of the semester, and you could be damn sure you'd learn a lot more
from that dialogue than you ever would from sitting bleary-eyed in the lecture
hall at 9am.

~~~
mvc
I've heard that's what you get at Oxford. Seems great but as a mere mortal who
attended a slightly less prestigious institution, I had to make do with
tutorial groups where 18-20 people would cram into a room designed for 12.

~~~
Osmium
You get it at a few places. It has its downsides though: expensive for the
university, and a big time suck for the supervisors, but honestly it's a
really successful system. I'd go as far to say that if there's any one thing
an institution can do to improve the abilities of their students, it would be
to adopt a system like that.

I'm not sure how students can be expected to learn from a one-sided teaching
system. We're not photocopiers. There's so much value from a meaningful,
extended dialogue between a student and a "mentor." Unfortunately, a lot of
people have to wait until postgraduate programs to get that, and even then may
not.

A lot of US institutions have office hours which could offer much of the same
if students knew to take advantage of them in the right way.

------
ducklamp
As a current PhD. student in the liberal arts my position likely veers
significantly from the mean around here. But having read a lot of these sorts
of "higher education is in tatters" sorts of discussions--and tending toward
skepticism about the general fitness of most humans to be involved in higher
education of any kind--I find myself pushing back against the critics. My
classroom experience as a philosophy and psychology major at a mid-tier, state
university left very little to be desired. I'm not sure I am capable of being
crafted into a good employee, whatever the skills of the institution
attempting the task. But I learned a whole lot about the world, how to reason,
how to communicate, etc. And I wasn't even a particularly good student.

As an undergraduate in our college of arts the average student, regardless of
major, was required to write scores of pages per semester, all to be read and
responded to by someone more than qualified to critique even the especially
precocious 19 year old. Most classes were of less than 20 students and
involved lively discussion with a professor who, more often than not, was well
published and read in his or her field. Setting aside employment for the
moment, I just can't imagine a much better way to grow a person.

There are certainly problems with higher education--too many to list really.
But the core of what universities do, as it relates to undergraduate
education, they do pretty well by and large. It is true due largely to
economic distortions and poor alternatives too many who would be better suited
by something more vocational go to four year universities looking for
something the university is not designed to provide. Hence the present
discussion I suppose. But for those who are looking for education in the
broader sense, I find universities to be serving as advertised.

------
vph
>“Traditional universities proudly list the Nobel laureates they have on
campus (most of whom have little to no interaction with students),” he writes.
“Our university would list the great entrepreneurs, inventors, and executives
serving as student advisers and mentors.”

Why would "great" entrepreneurs, inventors and executives have more time than
Nobel laureates would to spend mentoring students?

Mr. Khan's model can work as one-of-a-kind college, but to scale it up to the
mass, it will probably fail miserably.

The best model for future higher education is probably being done at MIT and
Harvard through their joined venture EdX, where students are being educated
and trained on and off line. In other words, these finest educators are taking
advantage of both latest technologies and traditional methods to educate their
students. Hopefully, in a few years, lessons will be learned and we can all
benefit.

------
nekopa
So really this boils down to one question: what is the purpose of
universities?

Put simply, is it-

A: to make prepared members of society

B: to make prepared members of a work force

Now this is not as simplistic as it seems. Some may argue that A results in B.
Some say that B is necessary for A to happen.

My view is why can't we have both?

~~~
saraid216
I disagree with A, B, and randomdata's C. (I mostly disagree with randomdata
because that's way too broad a stroke.)

The purpose of universities is to provide an umbrella for intellectual
specializations to conduct research. There are two reasons they admit
students: to pay the bills, and to acquire apprentices.

------
frankphilips
It's about time we see some disruption in education. The old school methods of
schooling will not work in this day and age. For example in the tech sector,
more companies are looking for graduates that have experience rather then just
a CS degree. There are free resources to learn how to code like Codeacademy,
Udacity, Coursera, Mozilla’s P2PU, Google Code University, and MIT Open
Courseware. There are also more and more high-quality paid resources, both
online and off, like General Assembly, Treehouse or Bloc, not to mention local
continuing ed classes. Mr. Khan and Peter Thiel are headed in the right
direction.

~~~
pfortuny
Do not confuse old with crappy. The fact that most lecture-based schools are
crappy does not diminish the value of a lecture (cf. Oxford etc.). The problem
is not necessary the method but the numbers.

Of course, a "lecture" on Perl is probably as useless as a "practical with
computers" on Metaphysics.

~~~
objclxt
This is a very important point. The problem, particularly in the US but not
exclusively so, is that at the top universities the best _faculty_ are not
necessarily the best _teachers_. You can be a world class researcher and still
be a terrible lecturer.

A truly great lecture is akin to a piece of theatre, especially in the
humanities. Really, that's one of the problems with the methods that Khan
promotes: they appear to work very well for quantitative subjects that can be
accurately tested, but that doesn't apply to many of the arts.

I don't see why the humanities should be relegated to "ungraded seminars at
night on art and literature". And, as others have pointed out here, one of the
reasons Nobel laureates who are faculty may have little time for students is
because they have a lot of other things to do: the same is surely true for the
professionals Khan wants to advise students?

I don't want to sound as if I'm against the Khan Academy - it's fantastic. I
think there is real value in implementing many of its ideas into standard
education, and I know that's already happening with projects like edX and the
like.

------
zackmorris
I would rather make the real world work more like college..

------
hpvic03
What problems do these ideas solve?

I suppose working with mentors could help students be better prepared to join
the workforce, but students can already do that on their own by getting
internships.

Classes could be self-paced, but then likely many students would lose the
motivation to learn. People are strongly driven by competition and deadlines,
two things schools excel at providing.

There already are internationally recognized assessments -- standardized
tests. Though they are typically useless without a degree. It would be
difficult to change this, but if you could then you might make colleges
obsolete. Many people would not spend 4 years and $50,000 on a college degree
if they could study for 6 months, take a test, and get the same job. But I
don't think this could work. For example, even though we already have the
GMAT, GRE, and MCAT, it's unlikely you will ever convince medical schools to
let in students with an MCAT and no undergraduate degree. And if an employer
is choosing between someone with a perfect GMAT and no undergrad, and a
Stanford graduate with a mediocre GMAT, the choice will likely be in favor of
the Stanford grad. I don't think this would change even if you made the test
more comprehensive and difficult.

Not being graded: this may increase students' intrinsic motivation to learn,
but it also may decrease their motivation, since there would be no penalty for
not learning the material. But if you maintain that students must take an
internationally recognized test at the end, then test-taking abilities will
still be measured, so you're just playing with motivation here and not really
changing much.

These ideas are interesting, but even if schools enacted them, what great
improvements would they bring to our society?

------
drd
“… the faculty would consist of professionals the students would work with as
well as traditional professors ... by de-emphasizing or eliminating lecture-
based courses, having their students more engaged in research and co-ops in
the broader world …”

The problem lies in the teaching materials and the teachers. In most cases,
faculties don’t have real world working experience, so they just provide their
students with examples from text books. And text books are written by
faculties who mostly don’t have real world experience. Also, the race in
producing research artifacts is extremely distracting for the faculty members.
Universities need to distinguish between teaching faculty and research
faculty.

As a very simple example, a state machine is a very helpful design tool if
used properly. But, I noticed almost none of the new hires knows that a state
machine is best used in modeling the physical world, people keep using this
concept in very inefficient ways (here is a concise version of what I teach
<http://www.drdacademy.com/?id=13>).

~~~
aidenn0
"Also, the race in producing research artifacts is extremely distracting for
the faculty members. Universities need to distinguish between teaching faculty
and research faculty."

I disagree. When you make research faculty teach undergraduates, you are
basically forcing them to interact with the undergraduates, which is a
mutually beneficial arrangement.

~~~
drd
Yes, it is mutually beneficial. But, I have seen how new hires are suffering
due to the fact that they have not gained practical knowledge at school. So,
there is a problem.

------
jiggy2011
This sounds a lot like an apprenticeship with a book club and some arts and
crafts attached.

Perhaps that is fine, it seems to me that to most people (especially parents)
what is important is not so much what is taught or how it is taught but the
fact that they can say they have been to a place called a "university".

------
cube13
So what's the difference between this and a technical school? Those are
exactly what Khan has described.

------
hdoan741
My first thought (as a student) is that it is not easy. During my internships,
I was usually spent at the end of the day; I only wanted to chill out after
work. I tried to take online courses at the same time, and it turned out to be
horrible. It would require a lot of discipline and motivation to make it work.
This is not for everyone.

It is better separate the working and the learning. A model like the co-op
program offered by University of Waterloo may works better. In the program,
students study and do internship alternatively every 4 months. When they
graduate (after 5 years), students would have 5-6 internships in their CV. So
far most students in the program that I have met are excellent!

------
tokenadult
There are several interesting comments on this article that relate to company
hiring procedures. With the help of other HN participants, I have gradually
compiled references to build a FAQ file on that subject,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543>

which seems to be well liked by other participants here. To relate what the
research says to what Salman Khan is proposing, it is a widely replicated
finding all over the world, for many categories of jobs, that work-sample
tests based on actual job tasks do much better at identifying successful
workers than higher education credentials. Any employer that doesn't want to
be a chump should hire most workers on the basis of a work-sample test.

What an institution of higher education could do to respond to what research
says about preparing learners to succeed in finding jobs and doing jobs well
is make various work-sample tests part of a graduation comprehensive
examination. Currently higher education degrees are based mostly on "seat
time" (so that the saying is, "All you need to get a degree is a heartbeat and
a check"), rather than on demonstrated competencies for doing any useful form
of work.

[http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_la...](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_large_numbers_of_college_students_don_t_learn_much)

A college or university that says to the world, "Our graduates who obtain our
diplomas demonstrate their competence with work-sample tests, the results of
which we list on their official academic records" would rapidly gain notice
from companies with research-based hiring procedures. (And why would anyone
want to work for a company with hiring procedures that are contrary to the
best research?)

[http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...](http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf)

[http://geb.uni-
giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/prepri...](http://geb.uni-
giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/preprint_j.1468_2389.2010.00485.x.pdf)

That could provide the new college or university leverage to gain market share
as compared to other colleges and universities. That would be enough for it to
thrive as a new institution of higher education.

Yes, there are other reasons to go to college besides getting a job after
graduation. But the research shows that many of those purported reasons are
poorly achieved by current higher education practice,

<http://chronicle.com/article/Academically-Adrift-The/130743/>

and a new model of college or university might be able to do some outside-the-
box innovation to also achieve better in that regard. Trying something new
would not be a bad idea.

~~~
ChuckMcM
_"A college or university that says to the world, "Our graduates who obtain
our diplomas demonstrate their competence with work-sample tests, the results
of which we list on their official academic records" would rapidly gain notice
from companies with research-based hiring procedures. (And why would anyone
want to work for a company with hiring procedures that are contrary to the
best research?)"_

This is exactly the line of reasoning that ITT Technical College takes [1] and
yet few, if any, of those graduates go to work for Google or Microsoft or
Apple in their engineering programs. (all companies that pride themselves on
having 'enlightened' hiring practices)

What this means for the entrepreneur is that you _can_ hire top technical
talent that these other guys won't touch because that talent either graduated
from a more 'trade' oriented school than an Ivy League school, or if that
talent trained themselves differently (online/self taught/Etc).

[1] "At ITT Technical Institutes, we are committed to helping men and women
develop skills and knowledge to pursue opportunities in many of today's
promising career fields, including electronics, drafting and design, criminal
justice, business, information technology, health sciences and nursing." -
<http://www.itt-tech.edu/>

~~~
wturner
I once had an education entrepreneur who had built 3 schools tell me in
private that ITT techs business model is overtly designed to target quote:
"The welfare market". ITT is ignored because it's a known parasite. If you
look at ripoff report.com and search ITT tech you'll get a list of complaints.
The cultural underpinning and intent of an institution actually has a strong
affect on it's "cultural" outgrowth imho. You can't really measure this of
course. I work at a school that is intertwined with the entertainment industry
and unfortunately a large part of it is more culturally "entertainment
industry"-ish (with all the shallow business and marketing psychology) than
education-ish. So there is a rift between promoting something as a marketing
strategy and really having the idea as part of the cultural framework that you
believe in and intend to deliver on.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Also, think of ITT as a negative filter. If you go to ITT or Phoenix, rather
than say, a traditional college, employers could make generalizations about
your background almost immediately (destitute, not serious about schooling,
bad background, high risk) regardless of your real capabilities.

------
shannonbailey78
Just as long as I don't have to become an indentured servant to school loans
I'm all in.

------
michaelochurch
Education intersects with two problem areas that have historically been
correlated:

1\. Knowledge sharing. Books no longer take three months of a person's time to
copy, but <$0.01 of electricity. Video lectures are now freely available. This
is awesome! But it's not the full picture when it comes to education. You also
need frisbee games and poetry nights.

2\. "Social". This includes credentialing, social networking, and creation of
an environment (in college, a mostly parentally funded and artificial one)
conducive to rapid learning.

The second of these is much harder, because people still believe that
exclusivity is necessary to preserve quality (and, sadly, they are not
entirely wrong). I've said before that there are two sub-problems in social.
One is _documenting_ existing relationships. That's lucrative but does little
real good for the world. The second is to _expand_ the social graph. That does
a lot of good but it's also risky and rarely remunerative because some people
(and the _vast_ majority of the powerful) _like_ exclusivity. The problem with
"disruption" is that it assumes the disrupted are old fogeys who won't fight
back, and that's never true.

~~~
saraid216
At the university level, there is also academic freedom and research.

