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We’re #3 on Paul Graham’s Frighteningly Ambitious Idea List

32 points by padwiki 15y ago

dpritchett 15y ago
Is anyone else surprised at the number of frontpage articles name-checking pg this week?
- padwiki 15y ago
  The way I look at it, he name checked us, he just didn't know our name yet.
stfu 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      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.
ssebro 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
bicknergseng 15y ago
A similar discussion/blog post in a thread on another trending HN post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742455 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.
devicenull 15y ago
Why is your blog completely unusable without javascript enabled?
- padwiki 15y ago
  It's blogger. Not really something we have control over.
  - Iaks 15y ago
    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...
vibrunazo 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.
freshhawk 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
olalonde 15y ago
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.
- gojomo 15y ago
  I like it even with doubts whether it will come to pass. I can buy the fame for sure; the salary is harder: movie stars may be able to more effectively withhold their appearances/endorsement. Educators have more constraints on their withholding/spinning/endorsing behavior. But maybe!
- thisisnotmyname 15y ago
  I love the idea and hope it happens. Day[9] springs to mind, he's a former pro starcraft player who teaches the high levels of the game to other players in a weekly stream. He appears to be at least ramen profitable. I wonder if he serves as a model for this kind of approach. It would be great to see a Day[9] for every subject, even something as far flung as tennis instruction. Access to coaches is limited to highschoolers or those with gobs of money.
- FelixP 15y ago
  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.
- 15y ago
gojomo 15y ago
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.)
- padwiki 15y ago
  Shoot, you've gone ahead and skipped ahead to phase two of our master plan. Try not to tell our competitors...
- twelvechairs 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.
- olalonde 15y ago
  The optimal ecosystem in my mind would be one where the institutions offering accreditation are completely independent from the ones offering teaching. Aside from the obvious "division of labor is a good thing" argument, it would open up all sorts of possibilities: - Ability to take courses from multiple "universities". This will provide an incentive for "universities" to compete on a course by course level. - The burden of trust will mainly shift to the "accreditator" side, making it easier to open up new "universities" without prior reputation. Of course, they will still have to convince prospective students that their courses are good. - For companies: ability to compare prospective employees credentials in a more objective way. There will presumably only be a few "accreditation" companies unlike the current large amount of universities in the world. The only downside I can think of is that the accreditation institutions might not be testing what the universities want to teach or what the students want to learn. Also, universities/student might optimize for passing the exams rather than learning. Is that much different from the status quo though? It might be too early, but it might give some ideas for a startup.
Malcx 15y ago
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/ 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 15y ago
  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)
redthrowaway 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      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 ?
snikolov 15y ago
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.
- vacri 15y ago
  This was my sticking point as well. University doesn't just teach you facts, it teaches you how to think constructively, liaise, and how to research. Who is going to say "I need JIT Learning to teach me the scientific method"? That's an example of something that most people need to have introduced to them; folks just aren't aware that it exists as a process, let alone why.
- padwiki 15y ago
  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.
flashingleds 15y ago
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.

32 points by padwiki 15y ago

dpritchett 15y ago

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

padwiki 15y ago
The way I look at it, he name checked us, he just didn't know our name yet.

stfu 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.

ssebro 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.

bicknergseng 15y ago

A similar discussion/blog post in a thread on another trending HN post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742455 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.

devicenull 15y ago

Why is your blog completely unusable without javascript enabled?

padwiki 15y ago
It's blogger. Not really something we have control over.
- Iaks 15y ago
  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...

vibrunazo 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.

freshhawk 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.

olalonde 15y ago

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.

gojomo 15y ago
I like it even with doubts whether it will come to pass. I can buy the fame for sure; the salary is harder: movie stars may be able to more effectively withhold their appearances/endorsement. Educators have more constraints on their withholding/spinning/endorsing behavior. But maybe!
thisisnotmyname 15y ago
I love the idea and hope it happens. Day[9] springs to mind, he's a former pro starcraft player who teaches the high levels of the game to other players in a weekly stream. He appears to be at least ramen profitable. I wonder if he serves as a model for this kind of approach. It would be great to see a Day[9] for every subject, even something as far flung as tennis instruction. Access to coaches is limited to highschoolers or those with gobs of money.
FelixP 15y ago
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.
15y ago

gojomo 15y ago

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.)

padwiki 15y ago
Shoot, you've gone ahead and skipped ahead to phase two of our master plan. Try not to tell our competitors...
twelvechairs 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
olalonde 15y ago
The optimal ecosystem in my mind would be one where the institutions offering accreditation are completely independent from the ones offering teaching. Aside from the obvious "division of labor is a good thing" argument, it would open up all sorts of possibilities: - Ability to take courses from multiple "universities". This will provide an incentive for "universities" to compete on a course by course level. - The burden of trust will mainly shift to the "accreditator" side, making it easier to open up new "universities" without prior reputation. Of course, they will still have to convince prospective students that their courses are good. - For companies: ability to compare prospective employees credentials in a more objective way. There will presumably only be a few "accreditation" companies unlike the current large amount of universities in the world. The only downside I can think of is that the accreditation institutions might not be testing what the universities want to teach or what the students want to learn. Also, universities/student might optimize for passing the exams rather than learning. Is that much different from the status quo though? It might be too early, but it might give some ideas for a startup.

Malcx 15y ago

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/ 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 15y ago
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)

redthrowaway 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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 ?

snikolov 15y ago

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.

vacri 15y ago
This was my sticking point as well. University doesn't just teach you facts, it teaches you how to think constructively, liaise, and how to research. Who is going to say "I need JIT Learning to teach me the scientific method"? That's an example of something that most people need to have introduced to them; folks just aren't aware that it exists as a process, let alone why.
padwiki 15y ago
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.

flashingleds 15y ago

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.