
We’re #3 on Paul Graham’s Frighteningly Ambitious Idea List - padwiki
http://turingcollege.blogspot.com/2012/03/were-3-on-paul-grahams-frighteningly.html
======
freshhawk
That's an excitingly ambitious project. I really hope you guys pull it off.

One (extended) question though:

The first course is "a cutting-edge class in web application development for
mobile devices. Not only does it use texts focused on practical application
and cover tech like PhoneGap, Jo, Sencha, jQTouch, and jQuery Mobile, but it
is taught by a real-world developer with decades of university teaching
experience".

That's not a university course, that's a trade school course. Look at the
"textbooks". Probably a useful one but it's not CS. I know you say "We not
only teach CS/SE theory at the highest level, but also provide the practical
implementation that prepares you to excel in the workplace." but to be honest
that seems like a lie. I don't have much experience with teaching CS but I
have some.

The idea that you could teach a practical (necessarily complex) toolkit at the
same time or alongside high level CS concepts seems absurd. Students have a
hard enough time getting those high level concepts to click but now they are
mixing trade school toolkit training in at the same time? Those two goals
conflict with each other. It's like using gcc internals for a compiler course.

I am so onboard with the online, just in time, at your own pace learning
thing. But I have to say that the copy on this page has seriously dampened by
enthusiam.

You're called "Turing College" and the only course is a trade school mobile
app course covering mobile app framework libraries (at least they'll have to
come back in 6 months for the new version of the course) and say things like
this: "We’re teaching you to be a rock star, not just look like one on paper".
WTF? Was brogrammercollege.blogspot.com taken? And blogspot? really?

I hope my impression is wrong, but I'm not coming away with a good one from
this page.

~~~
padwiki
Thanks for the feedback on the copy. It's always hard to find that balance
between being informal and jokingly reference overused terms like "rockstar",
and being unnecessarily stuffy. We'll definitely take your comments to heart
though as we refine the general descriptions.

The whole concept of being able to mix real world (trade school) courses with
heavy theory is a tricky question. We have traditional theory heavy courses in
the pipeline, but realistically, it is extremely difficult to bootstrap with
theoretical courses. It's been tried before and typically fails quickly. Oddly
enough, you can give away theoretical classes, and you can charge $10,000 a
class for them, but you can't really sell enough at our $200-$400 price point
to pay for the cost of developing the class. We believe you can teach both,
and should teach both, but I'm well aware that we'll always have people saying
you can't or shouldn't even attempt to do so.

Oh, one note on the textbooks for the course. Of course there is an image
issue when you use Oreilly and Apress texts, but honestly, for that subject
there just aren't any traditional texts that come anywhere near the level
needed to teach the subject. Even those three have serious holes that Dr.
Ostrowski has worked with the authors to plug in this course. If you know of a
better text that we somehow overlooked, please drop me a note and we'll see if
we can integrate it as we create V2 of the course.

~~~
pork
Perhaps your use of the word "college" is currently misleading. As the OP
says, you're really offering trade school classes. When you offer a
comprehensive curriculum that includes a theoretical underpinning, that's when
you're a "college".

~~~
padwiki
Our first class definitely has practical application, but it is still taught
by a PHD and covers more ground at a higher level than the current college or
university standard.

If teaching applied material makes you a trade school, someone should tell
Harvard: <http://cs76.tv/2012/spring/>

As for the use of the word "college", well, it's the most accurate descriptor
of what we are building. We're not there yet, but we will be soon, and having
to print a whole new batch of business cards is just too darn expensive. We
could have chosen a more startup-ey name, but we hate startup-ey names. I
could have named it after myself as well, maybe something like "Huffman
Coding". We checked though, and that was taken.

While we're discussing it though, singularity university isn't a university,
and clown college does not cover the theoretical aspect of clowning
sufficiently. Also, University of Maryland College University is mildly
redundant. And why do you park on the drive way and drive on the park way?

~~~
freshhawk
Since I started using the term "trade school" here I want to be clear I don't
use it as a pejorative term, just a differentiation.

------
gojomo
I believe most of the new-model online/for-profit universities actually had to
buy older universities to get their accreditation.

So I doubt that "play[ing] their game better than they do" by pursuing
traditional accreditation is really the disruptive strategy here. Blow up the
whole rotten credentialist system and replace it with something very
different.

(A meta-credentialing service might be a neat startup. With an explosion of
non-traditional courses, certifications, and credentials, which actually hold
up as meaning something? Communicating something here is a process, trust, and
even data/statistics challenge – a nice community/tech opportunity.)

~~~
twelvechairs
I agree - very hard to start a (long-course) educational institution without
first establishing the credibility (in the actual industry, not to the govt.)
of the certificate you get at the end of it.

What a system like this really needs is a strong way for future employers of
graduates to rate their relative ability (eg. 'according to our benchmarks
this person's ability in python lies _x_ far between the average coder on
github and [insert famous python user here]').

Perhaps establishing 'credentialing' should come before establishing a school?

~~~
padwiki
You would think so, but we actually can't even apply for regional
accreditation until the first student graduates from a full degree program.

Yes, the system is rigged against new entrants.

------
snikolov
_Just-in-time learning is the future. No ifs, ands, or buts. Any argument you
might have to the contrary is not only wrong, but dangerously wrong ... The
current system of teaching students everything they might need to know, just
in case it ever comes up, is an artificial construct that resulted from
limited access to books and a limited amount of time available for study. Just
in time, on the other hand, is how we actually learn by default._

This is an interesting point. I happen to disagree, and I hoped that the
author would go on to say exactly why it's wrong, especially dangerously so.
It seems like the author rejects curriculum-based courses of study that
provide a broad, solid foundation in favor of just-in-time courses of study,
in which one learns whatever is necessary at the moment, right before applying
it.

My main objections are that

* There are things you don't feel like learning that you would do well to learn. I had a lot of freedom to choose courses during school, which was great, but I am about to graduate with a lot of holes in my knowledge.

* No matter how smart you are, you would benefit from the guidance of a teacher --- guidance _through a full curriculum_ that gives you a solid foundation and imparts onto you important patterns of thought.

~~~
padwiki
I was hoping this comment would come up, actually. The real difference in just
in time vs. just in case has to do with delivery, sequencing and retention. A
broad, solid foundation sounds great on paper, but there are some hard
realities that sink in shortly after graduating. First, within about 6 months
the amount of actual knowledge you retain from this foundation is probably
going to be between 5 and 7%. That's 5-7% of the total from a not very
efficient 4 or 5 years of dedicated study. How not efficient? Well, if you
look at the in major portion of your degree, you probably had about 450 hours
in real classroom instruction, or a little under 2 hours a week. So, of those
450 hours, you will probably retain less than 30 or 40 hours worth of real
useful knowledge. you may dismiss this as hyperbole, but trust me, all that
work dissolves incredibly quickly. I remember Big O, a couple of formulas, and
the ability to order a sandwich (or was it a donut) in German.

More importantly, though, is the fact that since you only have 40 or so
classroom hours in any class, and you have to teach to the average, it is
extremely difficult to build up to a properly high level of skill in any
particular subject. It _feels_ hard while you are doing it, but after you
graduate, you realize the people who have been focusing on the subject for a
couple years are light years ahead of you. It's even more difficult to chain
subject together to reach that high level. The closest thing we have is a
generic 100,200,300 level system with some prerequisites.

How does this relate to just in time vs just in case? Even if you assume an
identical breadth of knowledge, being able to sequence classes together in
series instead of having semester and scheduling gaps means you go into the
next class with more knowledge retained from the previous, which means you can
build on your foundation in a more logical and efficient way and reach those
higher levels that you just can't in a fragmented system. You can approach
this from the ground up (building on higher and higher concepts), but the very
nature of a JIT system means you can also approach it from the top down. That
is, you can define the ends result or top level class, and then sequence each
course to build up the fundamentals you need, just before you need them.

The point? If you are defining a broad base of skills, JIT allows you to
master each one quicker and sequence them together to reach higher levels of
mastery. If you need skills in the real world, JIT is the quickest and most
efficient way to build those skills. The reason I consider disagreeing to be
dangerously wrong, is that JIT is so much more effective at real education
that those who bank on JIC for their future (students, schools, or countries)
will find themselves left in the dustbin of history.

~~~
snikolov
Thanks for the thorough reply. It seems we agree on a few key points:

1) Retention sucks in the current model of higher education.

I've been thinking about this one a lot lately. I've been doing a one year
masters where I'm taking two courses a semester and doing research. The depth
with which I am learning things is _night and day_ compared to the depth with
which I learned my undergrad material. During undergrad, I was drinking from a
firehose and just trying not to drown. I would turn in unfinished problem
sets, not having learned the material, and move on with my life. I would sleep
through classes out of sheer exhaustion.

Now, with just two classes, I'm able to learn things almost well enough to
teach them. So one way to improve retention is just to take things slower.

Another model comes to mind if we consider how people study at Cambridge,
Oxford, etc. I have not experienced it myself, but according to students who
went there as exchange students (and students from there who came here (here
being MIT)) it's pretty different. Students here are overwhelmed with constant
work. There, it is a lot more self paced, with a set of final examination at
the end (someone please correct me if I am not doing it justice). So perhaps
self-pacing and working smarter, not harder leads to more retention.

Do you know of any sources for retention statistics such as those you cited?
Some of them don't match my experience (for example, I would say that I spent
8-10 hours a week in classes related to my major).

2) Courses need to happen in a logical sequence so that they can build on one
another.

When I first read your post I thought you were suggesting that students
should, by themselves, pick what to learn based on what they want to build, in
lieu of being guided through a logical curriculum.

The point about scheduling gaps is interesting. Scheduling gaps happen because
it's hard to satisfy the constraints of so many student and faculty schedules.
If you could take courses on demand, that would fix things.

3) Results driven learning can be excellent for motivation and retention.

When one talks about results, there is a fundamental issue of time scale.

Courses that say things like "When you're done, you will have built an
autonomous mobile robot" are great.

But there are many fundamental things to learn, over a long period of time,
whose benefits

* you might not see for a long time * are broader than you could have ever imagined (and hence the benefit would seem artificially low to you)

If you as a student get to pick the desired result yourself all the time, you
might be tempted to pick shorter-term results. This can be catastrophic to
your education.

I believe in forcing people to learn fundamentals of their chosen field ---
fundamentals whose power they might not appreciate until later. Learning
fundamentals (that you might choose not to learn if you weren't forced to) is
fruitful in powerful and unexpected ways.

Take pure math classes. You learn analysis. Then you learn measure theory.
Then you learn measure-theoretic probability theory. Then you learn stochastic
processes. All of a sudden, financial mathematics becomes easy to grasp. But
so do a host of other things. Signal processing, computer vision, statistical
mechanics, complex multiagent systems, epidemic modeling, control systems.

I suppose you could have started on this path because you wanted to learn
financial mathematics. But it probably would have seemed way too complicated
and difficult. But if someone says they want to be an applied mathematician (a
much "broader" and more long term goal than just learning financial
mathematics), then they'd better take a ton of pure math.

~~~
padwiki
1) There have been a few different experiments with self pacing and retention
at schools like Oxford (and a college in Iowa of all places). The typical
result is a significant increase in retention with lower stress. The problem,
and fundamental reason why this isn't the norm, is simple logistics. Trying to
build a serial system of education that still uses classrooms is massively
difficult. The closest you can get is a compromised 6 week class system that
is still extremely difficult to pull off. Parallel is just easier and more
cost effective to administer. It's also easier and more cost effective to
administer on an online system which is why the push for MOOC. The difference
for us is that we care more about optimizing the learning process itself and
real evaluation and guidance, and are willing to bet that enough students also
care about those points to give us a chance at proving it at a large scale.
Our system costs a little more than free, sure, but the difference in results
can be dramatic, as you are seeing with your masters program.

I don't have the 7% study at hand, but I'll try to look through my list of
references to see if I can track it down. They cover some statistics on
retention in this article:
[http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...](http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all)

As for in-major hours, it may vary a bit by school (and MIT has a higher
percentage than most), but here is the breakdown for UT. In-major credits
required for a CS bachelors: 45. Average credits per class: 4. Weeks in a
semester: 14. Average classes per week: 3. Total estimated lecture hours per
class: 42ish. Total in major lecture hours for 45 credits: about 500. Subtract
intro days, quiz and final days plus time for class to get settled, etc.. and
you have somewhere around 400-450 hours left, or 100 per year, 2 per calendar
year week or 3.5 per school year week. Some semesters you might not have any
in major, some you might have 2 or 3, so remembering 8 hours in a week of
classes is not outside of the data set.

2) A student should not have to know the exact set of skills necessary to
build up to the higher level concepts. This is one of the problems with the
self directed learning attempts in traditional schools. But, if the student
has a clear end goal in mind (say, the goal of becoming a search engineer at
Google), then a JIT system that can build a sequence of courses based on the
concepts within the course is more effective and targeted than a standardized
fire-hose curriculum. Speaking of fire-hose, I'm working on a post covering
context switching in a parallel educational system that addresses exactly why
this is such a problem.

3) This comes back around to the top down (or goal oriented) approach, and
gets even more interesting with a mentor guided approach. Imagine a hybrid
apprentice/mentor system where the mentor can define a sequence (or
collection) of high level concepts which the learning system could then take
and generate a path to master those concepts. All the while, the mentor could
provide direct guidance and assistance where needed and help answer the tough
questions that arise without having to dedicate all their time to the actual
instruction. There are many, many, variations on this pattern that work
extremely well with JIT systems but really don't work at all in JIC.

------
olalonde
What does HN think of my prediction?

Within the next decade, we will see the rise of the teacher superstar. They
will have salaries/compensations comparable to movie stars except their
performance will be teaching online to massive amounts of students.

We can already see a beginning of that trend with Salman Khan or Peter Norvig
teaching an AI class online.

~~~
FelixP
Optimistically, I think it'd be a great thing if this (or even some portion of
it) came to pass.

Two thoughts come to mind:

1) Salman Khan is arguably this already (although he's not a "teacher" in the
narrow, institutional sense) - he's managed to educate thousands of students
rapidly, and he's raised a significant amount of capital for Khan Academy (not
to mention attracted quite a bit of media attention)

2) The best private schools, I suspect, house many potential "superstar"
teachers. The problem is that the schools have most of the reputational value
and reap almost all of the financial rewards. In a lot of ways, it's an
information asymmetry problem; I attended such a school and had what I would
imagine to be a very disproportionately high number of superstar teachers, but
I didn't know which teachers were superstars until after I had enrolled in the
school and taken their courses.

------
dpritchett
Is anyone else surprised at the number of frontpage articles name-checking pg
this week?

~~~
padwiki
The way I look at it, he name checked us, he just didn't know our name yet.

------
vibrunazo
I'm not sure I follow. Am I supposed to pay $10k for an online course that I
know little about their reputation, with no free trial nor guarantee from
existing businesses that they actually value your certification? It's hard to
imagine how you'd get early adopters to get traction.

I think you're looking at it wrong. You shouldn't be comparing yourself to
universities. Don't compare your prices, duration and accreditation with them.
You should be building something completely different from the ground up.
Something that is viable in today's world, not trying to bandage existing
university models to today's world. Like pg said, build your own thing, if
it's really good, it will eventually replace universities without you even
aiming for that.

Personally, I think you should focus much more heavily on the accreditation
side than anything else. Just try to build a certification system together
with existing tech employers, something that they would sign and put a banner
in your website saying "company X approves this certificate as important for
our selection process". _That_ would get early adopters interested. After you
have that. Offer your classes for free, make those as widely available as
possible. Charge for the certificate and one on one help with those who feel
they need it to get your certificate. Well, that's how I think this
universities will actually get disrupted.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I'd actually focus more on reputation for delivering results than
accreditation. Accreditation is a massive bureaucratic nightmare and I'm not
sure it's worth it. For access to Title IV, maybe, but it's going to seriously
cost you in other ways, slowing you down on a 1000 fronts.

I don't think you can beat the current universities by playing the game by the
rules they've set up to manage their competition. Just seems like you've lost
before you've even started.

~~~
padwiki
We actually have to focus on results first and foremost. By the time we can
even apply for accreditation (probably 3 years out) the issue of accreditation
for reputation will be moot.

But, you have to look at what the larger impact can be with accreditation and
Title IV. Even though we are strongly against student loans, being able to
work with state and federal governments for grant and work study funds is the
best and most direct way we have at hitting "free education for all" status.
It's also the quickest way to move out of the relatively small group of
students who don't care about accreditation to reach the much larger group
that does. It's only by being a reasonable alternative to this group of
students that we can apply real pressure to the current system. As long as we
aren't accredited, the existing institutions can simply point to that fact and
write us off and most people will listen to them.

------
Malcx
It doesn't quite meet your criteria for start today, but the Open University,
a well respected "virtual uni", has been running in the UK for over 40 years.

<http://www.open.ac.uk/>

Fees are a little higher but only marginally at around $8000 per 120 credits
for international students. (A typical degree requires 300-360 credits)

Many degrees can be completed over 7 or more years if it's convenient. But I
think there is a minimum time as some coursework is assessed to a schedule.

So there is definitely a market for this type of learning, and competition
almost always benefits the customer, so good luck!

~~~
padwiki
OU was a big inspiration for us. The bar we personally use is building a
system designed for Silicon Valley. Pacing and availability are critical, as
is maintaining a very high standard for classes. Right now, OU doesn't meet
either requirement. (their SE program, for example, is little more than a few
intro to Java classes and some SE theory)

------
flashingleds
Regarding the point: "Just-in-time learning is the future. No ifs, ands, or
buts. Any argument you might have to the contrary is not only wrong, but
dangerously wrong."

I don't think I agree with you there (or perhaps I just didn't interpret the
point correctly). In certain fields of study - and perhaps software
engineering is one - this might be true, but it does not hold generally. If
tomorrow I find myself needing to write a good zero-finding algorithm in a new
language, then yes, I can probably absorb that material quickly. If I find
myself needing to model the temperature dependence of something using an
esoteric branch of quantum mechanics, then good luck to me without 3 years of
prior study in topics that didn't seem relevant to anything at the time.

------
stfu
This is very very a long shot project. I have watched colleges trying to get
their first accreditation (I guess most likely going to be DETC in that case),
but it is really a difficult process which gives them very little room outside
of following the existing for-profit college business model. Plus the pricing
is another issue. For example via distance CS Master Degrees at state colleges
can go for under $10.000 (Columbus State, Dakota State). The other more
important thing is brand building. And developing Top Education brand burns
lots of money and time. But it is exciting to watch the new approaches to
Education grow. Hopefully one or another are able to break out.

~~~
padwiki
No arguments on the long shot part, and you're right, focusing on
accreditation does put some serious limitations on exactly how we can
structure our business model. Not focusing on accreditation, however, means it
is very easy to create a business model that is impossible to accredit. Udemy,
for example, will never be able to achieve their original vision of being a
real college or university because their business model relies so heavily on
revenue sharing for the instructors, which is a big no no for accreditation
boards.

Cost is actually the one area where we can compete very aggressively. Columbus
state may be able to sneak under the $10k mark, but for an equivalent program
we'll be just over $3k with a much more flexible and adaptable system. That
number, btw, is with state and federal subsidies for the school, often upwards
of $10,000 per student per year. We're coming in completely unsubsidized at a
price that's less than a third of our cheapest competition with an offering
that is significantly higher quality (we're competing with MIT for some of our
professors).

Brand building really is the toughest nut to crack, and one what we have a
couple different strategies for. Not really comfortable discussing those
strategies on this forum, but let's just say we've thought a great deal about
the problem.

~~~
rdl
Isn't the traditional way to get a new college accredited to buy an existing,
economically failing school which is already accredited and take over the
credential?

~~~
padwiki
Sure, it's traditional if you are unable to meet accreditation standards on
your own and have a spare $10mil in the bank. We can meet those standards on
our own, however, we don't have a spare $10mil in the bank.

------
bicknergseng
A similar discussion/blog post in a thread on another trending HN post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742455>

Maybe we're all just seeing an end to the vague rhetoric about college
"preparing you for life" rather than training you for the workplace.

------
redthrowaway
That's really cool. Unfortunately, I'm not willing to drop $400 for an online
course of unknown quality, with uncertainty about accredidation, when coursera
is free. How do you plan to attract your initial users?

~~~
padwiki
The best way we can attract our first users is with having a course that is so
valuable for our students that accreditation concerns become secondary. In
this case, if you are looking for a high level class in Web App for Mobile,
you probably will never find it in the coursera, mitx, udacity or khan
catalogs. They have no interest or incentive to put that sort of course
together.

If you look at the value proposition for a student, our web app class is
extremely high. The material covered in that class can have a direct impact on
job prospects, billing rates, or internal promotion opportunities, and it is
such a difficult area to self teach that saving tens or hundreds of hours
fighting though online tutorials is well worth the $200 or $400 that the class
costs.

~~~
redthrowaway
How do I know it's high quality, though? $400 is a significant amount of
money. Without user testimonials or reviews, am I supposed to take it on blind
faith that it will be worth my $$?

I'm not slagging you, by the way. Just offering my initial reaction as someone
who _would_ be interested in such a class, who _is_ doing a CS degree at a
traditional university, and who _would_ like to see someone disrupt the higher
education model.

~~~
padwiki
As soon as we have users, we'll have user testimonials and reviews. It's part
chicken and egg, I know, but it's the same problem any new product has.
Someone has to be the first.

Other than user reviews (and the free preview and money back guarantee), what
could we do to convince you (or other prospective students in your position)
that it's worth the risk? Would a google hangout with Dr. Ostrowski (something
we have been talking about) make a difference ?

~~~
redthrowaway
>free preview and money back guarantee

Make this more prominent; I didn't see any mention of it. Just "Give us $400
for our awesome class".

>Would a google hangout with Dr. Ostrowski make a difference ?

Absolutely. An AMA wouldn't hurt, either. Also, sign me up for your
newsletter. Email's in my profile.

~~~
padwiki
Thanks for the advice, We'll definitely work on making our guarantee more
prominent.

I've been considering an AMA on Reddit, even though I actually had to quit the
site three months ago to get to where we are. AMAs on HN are a little tricky
as the commenting system is so...unique.

Either way, I'll add your email and keep you updated.

~~~
redthrowaway
HN AMAs unfortunately seem to be a non-starter. I can definitely sympathize
with blocking reddit for productivity reasons, but it's a connection with your
target market that shouldn't be ignored.

I like your idea, and I love your goal, but it's going to take more than that
to make me a customer who forks over hundreds of dollars. You've got the
attention of the technorati; I'd first focus on how you can convert _them_ to
paying customers, then deal with the plebs later.

------
ssebro
I think this would actually work better as a quick reference for people who
are already coders - sometimes you just need to look stuff up. Target Stack
Overflow rather than Stanford.

~~~
padwiki
Excellent point, and a strategy we have built in the learning system part
itself. As odd as it may sound though, I actually wouldn't want to go up
against Stack Overflow. They are a much more dangerous competitor than
Stanford.

------
devicenull
Why is your blog completely unusable without javascript enabled?

~~~
padwiki
It's blogger. Not really something we have control over.

~~~
Iaks
You choose the platform you publish on, though.

I always browse without javascript enabled. Sites that load, and/or warn me
correctly get a subtle mental nod and (maybe) even an addition to my safe-
list. Obviously a blank white page isn't going to bring anyone back a second
time...

