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So, here is my challenge to you: Why don’t you put your money and energy behind your convictions? First, Thiel is already doing this with 20 Under 20. Secon

So, here is my challenge to you: Why don’t you put your money and energy behind your convictions? First, Thiel is already doing this with 20 Under 20. Second, Founders Fund just led a $33M round for Knewton [0], which is doing adaptive education. Third, the extent to which the beneficiaries of usurious student loans now find themselves on the back foot is amusing. "First they laugh at you, then they fight you..." Wadhwa has realized that he can't simply shame the critics of higher ed into silence (as he's attempted for the last few years [1]), so now he's saying: "We can now make education affordable and pervasive." I don't think Wadhwa understands what this means. It means things like ai-class.org, ml-class.org, and db-class.org replacing large lecture classes. It means companies doing a lot more stuff like MCSE, and a lot less stuff like paying for people to do two years of an MBA. It means coworking spaces like biocurious at $150/month [2] replacing the expensive (and inaccessible) university labs. Most of all, it means obsolescing the higher ed business model of charging $60,000 per year [3]. In other words, while it's refreshing to hear people in higher ed finally start to acknowledge that the benefits they provide need to be greater than their costs, they don't understand that the solution involves the end of college as we know it. How could it be otherwise when there is now a six-order-of-magnitude gap between the cost of watching a Khan Academy video ($0) and the cost of dozing through the same content in a Harvard lecture hall ($250,000)? [0] http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/13/founders-fund-33-million-learning-knewton/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/13/founders-fund-33-million-le... [1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/25/students-stay-in-school/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/25/students-stay-in-school/ [2] http://biocurious.org http://biocurious.org [3] http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/financial_aid/cost.html http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/financial_aid/cost...

achompas 15y ago
How does 20 Under 20 change education in any way? How will Thiel change the problems behind higher ed by teaching twenty of the brightest teenagers how to become entrepreneurs? What will that prove for the other 99%? You also completely skip one of the main arguments in favor of a college education. Does Khan Academy also provide an atmosphere where students can study, party, hook up, make mistakes, and otherwise learn how to become members of society? I don't think there's a YouTube channel with that feature. Granted, kids shouldn't pay $40k a year to party, but you're declaring victory over lecture halls with a collection of online classes that started a week ago. We're a long way off from fixing education--a couple of YouTube videos and a single co-working space on the West Coast are one in many steps we need to take.
- byrneseyeview 15y ago
  Does Khan Academy also provide an atmosphere where students can study, party, hook up, make mistakes, and otherwise learn how to become members of society? You know what provides that atmosphere? New York. Or SF. Or Boston, Seattle, Austin--pretty much any city. I did not miss out on those opportunities from dropping out. The difference was that I was in the real world that colleges theoretically prepare you for: no RAs, no meal plans, fewer second chances, etc. I don't know why a fake version of the real world is a better preparation for the real world that the real real world. There was one other difference: not going to school is far, far cheaper. And you have enough free time to defray even that minimal cost by working.
  - fl3tch 15y ago
    > I don't know why a fake version of the real world is a better preparation for the real world that the real real world. Right! I don't know why doctors have to practice on cadavers. Stick a scalpel in their hand and let them operate! You first.
    - nickpinkston 15y ago
      Yes, and this practice, in addition to their further clinicals is called an apprenticeship. To pass the medical boards - just stick a pencil in their hand ;-) if they prepared adequately - they'll pass...
    - jhermsmeyer 15y ago
      My goodness. This type of thinking is going to shackle you from ever doing something new and untried. That's the most important lesson you don't learn in college: how to do something completely novel. And it's the most important lesson one can ever learn.
    - byrneseyeview 15y ago
      Me first, indeed. That's what I did; it works. That's also a completely different argument from the one I was addressing. It sounds like your version is that 18 to 22-year-olds are too dangerous to be unleashed on society (the person getting the "operation" in your analogy), so we need to send them to school to keep them out of trouble. But I don't understand why school is a better alternative than the job market.
flourpower 15y ago
But Harvard provides incremental value over Khan academy by serving as a networking tool and a credentialing mechanism.
- ramanujan 15y ago
  For now, that's still true. But LinkedIn/github/etc. are starting to provide better networks. As an employer, I give more credence to a kid with a good github account than I do to even a CS major from Harvard. As for credentialing, that is the next big step. It is already the case that if you see a CV with Google or Facebook on it, it doesn't matter whether that person has a college degree. You know they've been vetted by an institution of comparable prestige to Harvard. Solving the vetting and credentialing problem is going to be important, but it's not insuperable by any means. For example, ai-class.org, db-class.org, and ml-class.org are providing certificates of accomplishment. Any kid who nails Andrew Ng's CS229 class is definitely someone to consider over a liberal arts major, or even most CS undergrads.
  - ootachi 15y ago
    Ironic that you mention Google, because they famously care about degrees. A lot.
  - andylei 15y ago
    on the question of credentials: ootachi's comment is spot on. big companies like google, microsoft, and goldman sachs get way too many applications to not care about degrees. yeah, if you filter by college degrees, you're going to miss out on some great candidates, but there are a lot of great candidates out there. you don't need all of them to find a great hire. its simply not practical to do in depth examinations of every candidate. a good github account? big companies get so many resumes that they don't even finish reading many of the resumes, so forget about looking at code on github. maybe in the future, certain online universities may get enough general recognition that merely the presence of that university on a resume will pick up the interest of HR people, but currently, that's nowhere close to true. and until that happens, most kids will prefer harvard to taking classes online. plus, its not like its mutually exclusive. a kid from harvard can have a good github account. on the question of networks: linkedin is a joke. i'm way more likely to get a job or start a business with someone i knew in college than someone off of linkedin. github is a lot better, but its a pretty restricted space. you can get interviews for lots of kinds of jobs by going to harvard. programming is probably all you can get with a good github account (and probably not at really big companies). maybe if you're 18 and you know that all you want to is programming, maybe you should take a bunch of classes online, but the majority of 18 year olds probably want more flexibility.
patrickod 15y ago
I don't agree that 20 Under 20 is a stab at changing the educational system. Nor is 20 Under 20 very much like YC. The projects that the Thiel Fellows are undertaking are not all money making enterprises. Many of them are attempts at disrupting current trends without the explicit goal of gaining profit. The 20 Under 20 program is for those who have great ideas but no money with which to see them come to fruition on their own. Many of the Thiel Fellows have already undertaken 3rd level studies but the majority have not, and the Thiel Fellowship is not meant to be a condensed college replacement. It's a platform from which the Fellows can launch their ideas. Education is a very broad term. We shouldn't limit it to what happens on a college campus, but I think that we should bear in mind that for the majority of people a college setting works best for their development, both social and intellectual.
larrys 15y ago
"when there is now a six-order-of-magnitude gap between the cost of watching a Khan Academy video ($0) and the cost of dozing through the same content in a Harvard lecture hall ($250,000)" I think what you are saying is a "Khan Academy" concept as opposed to the actual Kahn Academy... As of the latest info on the Khan academy site (2/23/11) Kahn had done all the videos: http://www.khanacademy.org/about/faq#videos http://www.khanacademy.org/about/faq#videos You're not suggesting that Sal Kahn is in any way shape or form a replacement for learning from multiple qualified professors, instructors etc in their respective fields (even in they are only phd candidates for example) are you? Someone with no real world experience in many of the things he is teaching is "as good" as someone who has actually done something? Sal says "What topics do you plan to cover? "My goal is to cover everything."
- kamens 15y ago
  We are thinking very hard, right now, about how to open up Khan Academy content to other contributors without losing quality and consistency. If you look at some of the latest videos, you'll see Sal recording videos side-by-side with Vi Hart and professors from Stanford (focused on medicine in this latter case) This is just the beginning. I've heard Sal say many times, "In no way do I want to be the only person making videos. I just want to make videos until I die."
- mhb 15y ago
  Don't get hung up on the Khan Academy. It's only one example. The Great Courses my kids have watched have been, well, great. They do cost two orders of magnitude more than Khan Academy but that's still a four order of magnitude potential savings.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
Sniffnoy 15y ago
If the cost is literally 0 (obviously time, etc., need to be accounted for) this is a gap of infinitely many orders of magnitude, not 6.
astrofinch 15y ago
"How could it be otherwise when there is now a six-order-of-magnitude gap between the cost of watching a Khan Academy video ($0) and the cost of dozing through the same content in a Harvard lecture hall ($250,000)?" Oh come on, surely you know pre-calculus better than that.
Jd 15y ago
Fourth, Thiel already wrote an entire book (the Diversity Myth) about how one of the major barriers to progress in higher ed is the millions of dollars of often federal money siphoned off to promote "diversity" -- which actually end up in the hands of special interests groups inside of universities. This is a bit like the auto union problem. Ideally you would save the US auto manufacturers but you can't if the unions have no commitment to making a better product and too much power. The next best thing may be to go your own way. That said, I'm not convinced that 20 under 20 is a very good model for the long run. Hopefully Thiel will iterate.

achompas 15y ago

How does 20 Under 20 change education in any way? How will Thiel change the problems behind higher ed by teaching twenty of the brightest teenagers how to become entrepreneurs? What will that prove for the other 99%? You also completely skip one of the main arguments in favor of a college education. Does Khan Academy also provide an atmosphere where students can study, party, hook up, make mistakes, and otherwise learn how to become members of society? I don't think there's a YouTube channel with that feature. Granted, kids shouldn't pay $40k a year to party, but you're declaring victory over lecture halls with a collection of online classes that started a week ago. We're a long way off from fixing education--a couple of YouTube videos and a single co-working space on the West Coast are one in many steps we need to take.

byrneseyeview 15y ago
Does Khan Academy also provide an atmosphere where students can study, party, hook up, make mistakes, and otherwise learn how to become members of society? You know what provides that atmosphere? New York. Or SF. Or Boston, Seattle, Austin--pretty much any city. I did not miss out on those opportunities from dropping out. The difference was that I was in the real world that colleges theoretically prepare you for: no RAs, no meal plans, fewer second chances, etc. I don't know why a fake version of the real world is a better preparation for the real world that the real real world. There was one other difference: not going to school is far, far cheaper. And you have enough free time to defray even that minimal cost by working.
- fl3tch 15y ago
  > I don't know why a fake version of the real world is a better preparation for the real world that the real real world. Right! I don't know why doctors have to practice on cadavers. Stick a scalpel in their hand and let them operate! You first.
  - nickpinkston 15y ago
    Yes, and this practice, in addition to their further clinicals is called an apprenticeship. To pass the medical boards - just stick a pencil in their hand ;-) if they prepared adequately - they'll pass...
  - jhermsmeyer 15y ago
    My goodness. This type of thinking is going to shackle you from ever doing something new and untried. That's the most important lesson you don't learn in college: how to do something completely novel. And it's the most important lesson one can ever learn.
  - byrneseyeview 15y ago
    Me first, indeed. That's what I did; it works. That's also a completely different argument from the one I was addressing. It sounds like your version is that 18 to 22-year-olds are too dangerous to be unleashed on society (the person getting the "operation" in your analogy), so we need to send them to school to keep them out of trouble. But I don't understand why school is a better alternative than the job market.

flourpower 15y ago

But Harvard provides incremental value over Khan academy by serving as a networking tool and a credentialing mechanism.

ramanujan 15y ago
For now, that's still true. But LinkedIn/github/etc. are starting to provide better networks. As an employer, I give more credence to a kid with a good github account than I do to even a CS major from Harvard. As for credentialing, that is the next big step. It is already the case that if you see a CV with Google or Facebook on it, it doesn't matter whether that person has a college degree. You know they've been vetted by an institution of comparable prestige to Harvard. Solving the vetting and credentialing problem is going to be important, but it's not insuperable by any means. For example, ai-class.org, db-class.org, and ml-class.org are providing certificates of accomplishment. Any kid who nails Andrew Ng's CS229 class is definitely someone to consider over a liberal arts major, or even most CS undergrads.
- ootachi 15y ago
  Ironic that you mention Google, because they famously care about degrees. A lot.
- andylei 15y ago
  on the question of credentials: ootachi's comment is spot on. big companies like google, microsoft, and goldman sachs get way too many applications to not care about degrees. yeah, if you filter by college degrees, you're going to miss out on some great candidates, but there are a lot of great candidates out there. you don't need all of them to find a great hire. its simply not practical to do in depth examinations of every candidate. a good github account? big companies get so many resumes that they don't even finish reading many of the resumes, so forget about looking at code on github. maybe in the future, certain online universities may get enough general recognition that merely the presence of that university on a resume will pick up the interest of HR people, but currently, that's nowhere close to true. and until that happens, most kids will prefer harvard to taking classes online. plus, its not like its mutually exclusive. a kid from harvard can have a good github account. on the question of networks: linkedin is a joke. i'm way more likely to get a job or start a business with someone i knew in college than someone off of linkedin. github is a lot better, but its a pretty restricted space. you can get interviews for lots of kinds of jobs by going to harvard. programming is probably all you can get with a good github account (and probably not at really big companies). maybe if you're 18 and you know that all you want to is programming, maybe you should take a bunch of classes online, but the majority of 18 year olds probably want more flexibility.

patrickod 15y ago

I don't agree that 20 Under 20 is a stab at changing the educational system. Nor is 20 Under 20 very much like YC. The projects that the Thiel Fellows are undertaking are not all money making enterprises. Many of them are attempts at disrupting current trends without the explicit goal of gaining profit. The 20 Under 20 program is for those who have great ideas but no money with which to see them come to fruition on their own. Many of the Thiel Fellows have already undertaken 3rd level studies but the majority have not, and the Thiel Fellowship is not meant to be a condensed college replacement. It's a platform from which the Fellows can launch their ideas. Education is a very broad term. We shouldn't limit it to what happens on a college campus, but I think that we should bear in mind that for the majority of people a college setting works best for their development, both social and intellectual.

larrys 15y ago

"when there is now a six-order-of-magnitude gap between the cost of watching a Khan Academy video ($0) and the cost of dozing through the same content in a Harvard lecture hall ($250,000)" I think what you are saying is a "Khan Academy" concept as opposed to the actual Kahn Academy... As of the latest info on the Khan academy site (2/23/11) Kahn had done all the videos: http://www.khanacademy.org/about/faq#videos http://www.khanacademy.org/about/faq#videos You're not suggesting that Sal Kahn is in any way shape or form a replacement for learning from multiple qualified professors, instructors etc in their respective fields (even in they are only phd candidates for example) are you? Someone with no real world experience in many of the things he is teaching is "as good" as someone who has actually done something? Sal says "What topics do you plan to cover? "My goal is to cover everything."

kamens 15y ago
We are thinking very hard, right now, about how to open up Khan Academy content to other contributors without losing quality and consistency. If you look at some of the latest videos, you'll see Sal recording videos side-by-side with Vi Hart and professors from Stanford (focused on medicine in this latter case) This is just the beginning. I've heard Sal say many times, "In no way do I want to be the only person making videos. I just want to make videos until I die."
mhb 15y ago
Don't get hung up on the Khan Academy. It's only one example. The Great Courses my kids have watched have been, well, great. They do cost two orders of magnitude more than Khan Academy but that's still a four order of magnitude potential savings.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

Sniffnoy 15y ago

If the cost is literally 0 (obviously time, etc., need to be accounted for) this is a gap of infinitely many orders of magnitude, not 6.

astrofinch 15y ago

"How could it be otherwise when there is now a six-order-of-magnitude gap between the cost of watching a Khan Academy video ($0) and the cost of dozing through the same content in a Harvard lecture hall ($250,000)?" Oh come on, surely you know pre-calculus better than that.

Jd 15y ago

Fourth, Thiel already wrote an entire book (the Diversity Myth) about how one of the major barriers to progress in higher ed is the millions of dollars of often federal money siphoned off to promote "diversity" -- which actually end up in the hands of special interests groups inside of universities. This is a bit like the auto union problem. Ideally you would save the US auto manufacturers but you can't if the unions have no commitment to making a better product and too much power. The next best thing may be to go your own way. That said, I'm not convinced that 20 under 20 is a very good model for the long run. Hopefully Thiel will iterate.