Let’s Start a Learning Revolution

Michael Karnjanaprakorn, @mikekarnjSkillshare, CEO/Co-Founder

http://skillshare.com

I’m an entrepreneur based in NYC.

Where is our learning revolution?

Today, we’re going to challenge the traditional notion of education.

Why?

Because today the pinnacle of education is getting into college.

And not learning.

Which is a massive social problem.

I’m going to tell two stories around learning and education.

And for fun, I’ll teach you the secret behind being a winning poker player.

The first story starts here...

University of Virginia

Where I took an Economics course on Game Theory.

Which is a theory of competition stated in terms of gains and losses

among opposing players.

Zzz.

Boring, right?

But I memorized everything for the final exam.

And barely passed!

But, I was so focused on passing the test.

I didn’t really learn anything.

I still didn’t understand game theory.

Sound familiar?

Fast forward to May 2010.

I’m in Atlantic City with Annie Duke.

She’s also my poker coach.

Who gave me a lesson on...

Game Theory and Decision Making.

Poker is a game of decision making under conditions of uncertainty.

So, my gains are exactly balanced by your losses (sum-zero game).

And my success depends on the decisions of others (game theory).

As a poker player, my job is to always make the best decisions.

While you make the wrong decisions.

Which is how I win in the long-run.

I’ll break it down for you.

In poker, once you make a bet, the money isn’t yours anymore.

This is called a sunk cost.

So, you shouldn’t make bad decisions on getting it back.

Another example.

How many of you have friends in bad relationships that stay together?

Because they’ve been together for “five years?”

This is another sunk cost.

And a really bad decision.

Because you shouldn’t make decisions based on past investments.

In other words, your friends should break up.

This is the secret to winning poker:

Decision Making and Game Theory

A topic that I found insanely boring turned into the most

interesting topic of all time.

Because it was something I passionately wanted to learn about.

The second story starts with Erica Goldson at Coxsackle-Athens HS.

She gave a valedictorian speech to her 2010 graduating class.

And she said some remarkable things against schooling, like...

“I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning.”

“We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class.

However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective.”

“This is the dilemma I’ve faced with the American education system.”

I agree with her.

The U.S. education system is fundamentally broken.

So, where does a recent HS graduate go from here?

“9 out of 10 American high school seniors say they want

to go to college.

Source: The World-Wide Expansion of Higher Education in the Twentieth Century

So, how did this happen?

Before the 19th century, there were no systems of public

education.

In 1900, about half a million people worldwide were

enrolled in colleges.

Source: UNESCO (2009)

“Just because a boy wants to go to college is no reason we

should finance it.”

- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1939

Today, there are 150 million students today enrolled in

some kind of education beyond high school.

Source: UNESCO (2009)

“We will provide the support necessary for all young

Americans to complete college and meet a new goal: By 2020, America will once again have the highest portion of college

graduates in the world.”

- President Obama

Why is there so much importance on a new

institution like college?

College degree leads to success.

“Over an adult's working life, high school graduates can expect, on average, to earn $1.2 million; those with a bachelor's degree, $2.1 million; and people with a master's degree, $2.5 million.”

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

College also has intangible benefits.

You experience the world for the first time.

You make new friends.

You gain critical thinking skills.

You learn a lot about yourself.

You mature.

All of these are great and needed!

But, let’s paint a new picture of college.

Background Disclaimer: I like college.

Background Disclaimer: I went to college twice.

B.A. from UVAM.S. from VCU Brandcenter

But, here’s my beef with higher education.

We need to debunk the myth that a college degree leads to success.

It doesn’t.

“17M Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that require less than

the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.”

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

What’s the value of a degree from college? A job as a waiter?

Richard Vedder from The Chronicle of Higher Education debunks the myth

that a college education will result in higher paying returns.

“The stats have always been skewed for certain subgroups—particularly

relatively disadvantaged groups with low education outcomes—are higher than the average marginal returns to

education in the population as a whole.”

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

Focused on a small subgroup of the entire education ecosystem.

Here’s the reality...

Not everyone goes to Harvard.

Harvard only enrolls 20,000 students per year.

18.2M students enrolled in college in the U.S. (2007)

Source: National Center for Educational Statistics

NYU: 50,000 studentsMichigan: 41,000 studentsBerkeley: 35,000 students

UVA: 20,000 studentsStanford: 15,000 students

Yale: 11,000 students

So, where do the other 18M college students go in our country?

Since the pinnacle of education is getting into college.

I believe higher education has shifted from learning to short-term profit

maximization.

500,000 students

Extremely profitable business.

2009 Revenue: $3.7B

Triple the revenue ($800M) of Facebook (2009).

I did learn something in Economics:

When Demand > Supply

$$$

Which is why I believe higher education has shifted from

learning to profit.

In other words, colleges act as corporations like Goldman Sachs.

Speaking of Goldman Sachs.Remember the housing market crisis?

Well, the college bubble is bursting, too.

And it could even be worse.

Students at For-Profit institutions represent only 9% of all college

students, but receive roughly 25% of all Federal Pell Grants and

loans, and are responsible for 44% of all student loan defaults.

There is an inevitable student loan crisis coming.

Need more proof?Check out these headlines.

“Americans now owe more on their student loans ($830B) than

their credit cards ($827B).”

Source: Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2010

“Consumers who have questioned whether it is worth spending $1,000 a square foot for a home are now asking whether it is worth spending $1,000 a week to send their kids to college.”

Source: Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2010

$300B of the $830B student loan debts have been incurred in the last 4 years.

Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2010

To put this in perspective, the US economy is burdened with

$4 trillion of excess mortgage debt, which is 30% of GDP.

At this rate, we’ll break 1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000)within the next year for student loan debt.

And to make matters worse, the “defaults on student loans are

skyrocketing amid a weak job market and steadily rising tuition costs.”

Source: Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2009

“Default rates for federally guaranteed student loans are

expected to reach 6.9% for 2007. The highest rate since 1998.”

Source: Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2009

“College seniors who graduated in 2009 carried an average of $24,000 in student loan debt.”

Source: Project on Student Debt

“Unemployment for recent college graduates climbed from 5.8% in 2008 to 8.7% in 2009 – the highest annual rate on record for college graduates

aged 20 to 24.” ”

Source: Project on Student Debt

And it’s happening everywhere.Even in our backyard.

“N.Y.U. enrolled students without asking many questions about whether they could afford a $50,000 annual tuition bill.”

Source: The New York Times, May 28, 2010

“Then the colleges introduced the students to lenders who underwrote

big loans without any idea of what the students might earn someday.”

Source: The New York Times, May 28, 2010

Sound familiar?

“It’s just like the mortgage lenders who didn’t ask borrowers to verify

their incomes...”

Source: The New York Times, May 28, 2010

It gets even worse.

You can not walk away from student loans in the same way as mortgage holders.

Federal bankruptcy law makes it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debts.

And tuition will always increase.

Because the government is a huge mandated buyer and guarantor on

student loan debt.

Which means that tuition will always go up. Forever.

But, we can fix this.

Not everyone has to go to college.

Yep, I said it.

Not everyone has to go to college.

Yes, it has obvious benefits.

And we will always need an institution for higher education.

But, why not challenge the traditional notion of education?

Is a college education really worth a $20,000 student debt?

That will take the next 20+ years to pay off?

What happens when you switch careers?

Get laid off?

Or work an underpaying job?

Because you decided to take the road less traveled to

pursue your dreams?

College is not the holy grail to success.

Having a college degree will not ensure that you will be successful.

So, what can we do?

Here’s one simple idea.

Who made up the rule that we have to attend college for 4 years?

Why not 2-years?

This reduces tuition which will reduce the amount of student loans.

It allows students to spend the 2 years doing something.

Maybe travel around the world?

How about starting a business?

The possibilities are endless.

Here’s another idea.

Why not pay students to quit college?

Peter Thiel pays would-be entrepreneurs under-20

$100,000 to drop out of school. 

But, that’s not really scalable.

Here’s an even easier, scalable solution.

Why not go back to the true goal of education:

learn new skills

Where is our learning revolution?

But, even bigger than the student loan crisis is the “people crisis”

We are misleading our kids down the wrong path & promising them the

wrong things in life.

At TED 2010, Sir Ken Robinson stated “many people go through their whole

lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to

speak of.”

“Education dislocates people from their natural talents. And human

resources are often buried deep. You have to go looking for them.”

“You have to create the circumstances where they

show themselves.”

This will only happen if we bring learning back into the US

education system.

And by debunking the myth that a college degree leads to success.

The pinnacle of education should be learning, not going to college.

We need to stop creating a cookie-cutter experience around education.

We need a learning revolution inside and outside of the classroom.

Here’s our solution:

Platform to learn anything from anyone in your community.

Learning shouldn’t be confined to the four walls of a classroom.

Your city, network & community is the world’s biggest university of

excess knowledge and skills.

It just needs to be shared.

What do you want to learn?

Better yet, what can you teach?

Want to learn how to green your rooftop?

Bake the perfect cupcake from Magnolia Bakery?

Or how to increase your happiness?

You can gain this knowledge and more through Skillshare.

Because piquing your interest, finding new passions & learning new things should

be a life-long process.

Because everyone should be a life-long learner.

We need a learning revolution.

Thank you.

"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."

- Albert Einstein