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How to start a school with your friends

prigoose.substack.com

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Re: How to start a school with your friends

#61

Post by lesuorac »

dangus wrote: post #50
colechristensen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the question: who cares about accreditation? I'm not trying to be flippant, this is an actual question. Sure, getting a higher degree at another institution will have that requirement, as would a professional certification (medicine, law, professional engineering), but those are relatively narrow scopes. Isn't it true that in most cases nobody is going to care or even know enough to check accreditation?

Maybe this is news to people in the software industry, but a whole bunch of highly regulated (for good reasons) industries like medicine, teaching, and industries reworking professional licenses industries like civil engineering. You don’t want someone designing a bridge, performing open heart surgery, or flying a plane with 300 people on it who were trained by unverified schools.

Don't a lot of regulated industries have a test you can take like the Bar or PE so it doesn't matter where you get a degree?

Re: How to start a school with your friends

#62

Post by CrazyStat »

dangus wrote: post #52
CrazyStat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FractalU isn't a school. It doesn't need to keep records, comply with miles of state regulations (employee and volunteer background checks, record keeping, mandatory exams, ...). It doesn't need to be able to demonstrate to other schools (or universities) what the students achieved. It doesn't need to demonstrate to the state that it's actually teaching the students something. It doesn't handle any money, so it doesn…

As a note, they do handle money. They charge $600 for a course on how to replicate their community elsewhere. I don’t know about tuition for other courses because the links are broken. Some skepticism for me creeps in the more I peruse the fractal sites. Course links for the summer semester are broken, and a lot of the working content seems to be somewhat self-indulgent, reading more like a normal unremarkable friend…

The instructor for each course handles the money for their own course:

> So instructors must deal with collecting money and managing taxes on their own.

Re: How to start a school with your friends

#63

Post by CrazyStat »

The_Amp_Walrus wrote: post #30
CrazyStat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FractalU isn't a school. It doesn't need to keep records, comply with miles of state regulations (employee and volunteer background checks, record keeping, mandatory exams, ...). It doesn't need to be able to demonstrate to other schools (or universities) what the students achieved. It doesn't need to demonstrate to the state that it's actually teaching the students something. It doesn't handle any money, so it doesn…

a school is an institution that teaches people your definition of "actually a school" seems to arbitrarily include a lot of reporting and paperwork and commerce that have nothing to do with the bit where you teach people stuff

The reporting and paperwork are regulatory requirements imposed by the state, they aren’t arbitrary.

Re: How to start a school with your friends

#64

Post by os2warpman »

yupitsme123 wrote: post #14

I always wondered why no one creates new universities in the US. It seems like in the 1800s every rich guy started their own university, many with unique missions. The existing university model in the US seems like it's ripe for disruption so I'm surprised no one has tried to create their own.

You can go to:

" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...

And then sort by year.

They weren't all started in the 1800s, they were all started in the past and you're squishing 300 years of history into a single chunk of time, ignoring that there were decades-long gaps between foundings.

In my state there were four waves of foundings: colonial pre-USA land grant institutions, rich guy vanity projects a century later, post-WWII expansions 80 years after that, and biotech/health care market growth in the 2000s.

Re: How to start a school with your friends

#65

Post by dangus »

CrazyStat wrote: post #62
dangus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a note, they do handle money. They charge $600 for a course on how to replicate their community elsewhere. I don’t know about tuition for other courses because the links are broken. Some skepticism for me creeps in the more I peruse the fractal sites. Course links for the summer semester are broken, and a lot of the working content seems to be somewhat self-indulgent, reading more like a normal unremarkable friend…

The instructor for each course handles the money for their own course: > So instructors must deal with collecting money and managing taxes on their own.

Not for the Fractal Campus Accelerator Program, which is the part of this that feels like an MLM to me.

Re: How to start a school with your friends

#66

Post by colechristensen »

dangus wrote: post #50
colechristensen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the question: who cares about accreditation? I'm not trying to be flippant, this is an actual question. Sure, getting a higher degree at another institution will have that requirement, as would a professional certification (medicine, law, professional engineering), but those are relatively narrow scopes. Isn't it true that in most cases nobody is going to care or even know enough to check accreditation?

Maybe this is news to people in the software industry, but a whole bunch of highly regulated (for good reasons) industries like medicine, teaching, and industries reworking professional licenses industries like civil engineering. You don’t want someone designing a bridge, performing open heart surgery, or flying a plane with 300 people on it who were trained by unverified schools.

The people designing the plane aren't licensed. Engineers working on public infrastructure are licensed (at least one of them to sign off) as well as most buildings. But that is mostly it. Across the vast majority of industries, engineers aren't licensed in the US.

Re: How to start a school with your friends

#68

Post by smelendez »

yupitsme123 wrote: post #14

I always wondered why no one creates new universities in the US. It seems like in the 1800s every rich guy started their own university, many with unique missions. The existing university model in the US seems like it's ripe for disruption so I'm surprised no one has tried to create their own.

It’s easier to give to an existing one or start a parallel organization (e.g., think tank, the Thiel Fellowship, or Y Combinator).

If you think undergrad education should move in a certain direction, it’s probably easier to find a university on the way there and give them a donation to do more of what you like.

Re: How to start a school with your friends

#70

Post by hackyhacky »

lesuorac wrote: post #61
dangus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is news to people in the software industry, but a whole bunch of highly regulated (for good reasons) industries like medicine, teaching, and industries reworking professional licenses industries like civil engineering. You don’t want someone designing a bridge, performing open heart surgery, or flying a plane with 300 people on it who were trained by unverified schools.

Don't a lot of regulated industries have a test you can take like the Bar or PE so it doesn't matter where you get a degree?

It varies. In most states, you need to graduate law school in order to take the bar, but there are some exceptions.

Getting a pilot's license requires a certain number of hours of flight experience, which one gets as a student.

No state issues a medical license without completing an accredited residency program.

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