Ivory Tower Page #7

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They want to pretend

the education is something

that's completely non-financial.

It's an end in itself.

These are very noble ideals,

but they don't make sense

when people are taking on

$100-200,000 in student debt.

I don't think you'll find a more

fervent believer in the liberal arts

than the guy holding the

microphone in front of you today.

When you start college, that's the time

to discover what you love to do.

It might be theater and biology.

It might be neuroscience and religion.

Whatever it is, now's the time

when you have

the chance to experiment,

when you have the chance

to open yourself up to new things,

when you can discover who you

are and who you might become.

Yes, sir?

What you just said is

terrifically exciting.

Reminds me of going back

to when I went to school.

But the truth is

many of us in this room are about to

lay out a whole lot of money to you.

- Tell me one thing.

- Yes.

Is my daughter going to have a job

and she's not going to come back

home after it's done?

"ls your daughter gonna have a

job and not come back home?"

Uh, I can't tell you that,

although the time to be defensive

about education is not now.

This is the time to be aggressive

about a broadly-based,

intensely-personal and

intensively-practical form of education,

whatever school you go to.

And it is expensive.

I know.

I don't have to tell you parents here.

We're definitely ensconced in this view

that there's only one way

to go to college.

And that's, you know,

the four-year private school

where your kids live in dorms

with their friends

and have all their meals taken care of

and someone cleaning the bathroom.

I'm amply stressed

about the college search to come.

if you look directly that way,

that is the new One World Trade

building that they're building.

All the parents

I know, they're like

their kids' college search managers.

So, welcome to

the Bobst Library, everyone.

As you can see,

it's a very massive building.

Altogether there are

about nine libraries in the NYU family

and about six million volumes as well.

I want this for my kids.

It's just too bad it costs $60,000 a year,

and it really does cost $60,000 a year.

And this is the main building for

student life here on the NYU campus.

We have two athletic facilities

for you to go to.

They do have, like, pools.

There's a rock climbing wall even in one.

There's a squash court in one.

So if you're really into fitness...

It takes a real shift

to consider something different,

when our kids are on this

path towards a college degree.

Going to college

has become a way

to avoid thinking about the future.

"What are you going

to do with your life?"

"I don't know.

I'm just going to get another degree."

And instead of getting one credential

after another on some sort of track,

I think it's very important

to think hard about,

"if you didn't go to college,

what would you do instead?"

Peter Thiel, the man

who founded PayPal, funded Facebook,

is offering 24 college students $100,000

if they drop out of school

and start their own business.

When you think of hacking,

the first thing people think of

ls literally hacking a computer.

Hacking your education

is really finding an alternative.

I might go to college, I might not.

So that's why I'm here right now.

If you wanna challenge yourself

not to go college,

or if you wanna challenge yourself

to go to college

and get the most out of college,

you have to reflect

on what it is you're buying

and what it is your parents are buying.

The idea that you're going to go to

keg parties for four years sounds cool,

but when you think about

what parents pay for,

really what they're paying for

is for you to not be left behind

in the information economy, right?

People say to me all the time,

"Dale, aren't you ruining people's lives

"by encouraging them

to take a risk and not go to college?"

I think it's much riskier to go to college

and take on $20,000 of debt per year

and then have miserable job

prospects when you get out

and to have to start repaying that debt.

That seems like a really high risk to me.

When you look at higher education,

what you realize is what you're paying for

is this mythical, large bundle of things

that you're supposed to get.

So I'm here to give you a framework

to look at what types of services

you could be accessing

that could either supplement

or kind of replace going to college.

So I've unbundled college

into three parts.

The first is engaging with

content you're supposed to learn.

So it could be through a lecture,

transferring content to you.

Then there's an affiliate network.

Enduring relationships with people

that are going to took out for you,

that are going to help you

find opportunities.

And the third

is a credential of accepted value,

which is literally a piece of paper

that certifies that you have met

some minimum level of competency.

When I went to school,

there was no way to access the services

that higher education provided easily

and freely or cheaply on the Internet.

And it turns out,

well, now you kind of can.

What do you see, you know, in a world

in which degrees don't matter so much,

but where people say,

"Hey, I'm a dropout, but..."

I mean, not that you're going

to phrase it that way.

I won't necessarily say first off

that I've dropped out of school,

but they'll look at it and they'll say,

"So you have experience."

Since I was paying for college myself,

I realized pretty early on

it's too expensive for me

to find myself in college.

I need work experience,

I need life experience,

I need to get out of college

and actually start my own path.

There's, like,

4,000 schools right now.

In a couple of years,

that whole number

is going to get depleted,

and the only colleges that are really

going to matter in the future

are going to be

the prestigious Ivy League colleges

that have made a name for themselves.

My mom didn't go to college,

but my dad, he is definitely a person

who's benefitted well from college.

They thought I was crazy.

They were like, "What is this?

"A whole bunch of kids

coming to San Francisco

"who all don't want to go to college?"

They thought it was more like a cult.

A friend of mine told me,

"There's this Education Hackerhouse,

"and you have to meet the people,"

because I was also

into the future of education.

I had no idea there was

this whole community of people

that were passionate about the future

of knowledge and learning.

We've had hackers come in and sleep

on bunk beds working on their apps.

We've had meetups in the backyard.

We've had a variety of startups

working out of this house.

And it's a community

of people that believes that

we don't need to rely

on traditional schools or institutions.

There's no longer

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