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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

#71

Post by throwup238 »

2arrs2ells wrote: post #22
typewithrhythm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing it's at least partially too high risk from a students perspective. Much of the point of an established university is credentials, a new one cannot give the same recognition. This means that to attract new students, and build a reputation, you have to have some other draw; either some world renowned experts, or cheap (even free or scholarships) tuition. Probably both. And if you want your graduates to be…

You’re spot on. Bootstrapping a reputation is really hard (and expensive), and the very painful accreditation process makes it much harder (need students to get accredited, can’t offer degree to students without accreditation). Two good colleges who’ve overcome the challenges recently are Olin (engineering school in Boston) and Minerva (globally distributed college).

Olin did it by offering full rides to every student. Now that they’ve established their reputation, they only offer 50% tuition.

Re: How to start a school with your friends

#72

Post by aleph_minus_one »

dangus wrote: post #55
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 risk tolerance varies a lot between people.

Sure, but you can logically figure out why many of those professions sought professional licensure and accreditation in the first place. It’s the same concept as “regulations are written in blood.”

Rather: regulators want to regulate.

Re: How to start a school with your friends

#73

Post by Alex_001 »

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…

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Re: How to start a school with your friends

#74

Post by dangus »

Alex_001 wrote: post #73
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…

[dead]

I don't really agree in the sense that I don't find a problem with some tuition money being involved, that's going to be the case even with stuff you do through your local parks and recreation department.

The part that rubbed me the wrong way was specifically the way the community co-living university idea itself is being sold as an accelerator course along with all the negative aspects I described about why it feels like an MLM or a cult.

Here we've got a former software engineer and former serial startup founder basically quitting their jobs, almost certainly with big windfalls, and becoming co-living landlords selling an "accelerator" for others to start a similar scheme just feels a lot like trust fund kids who started a real estate empire from their trust fund money selling real estate courses on how you too can be just like them.

In other words, I think most people who enter the accelerator program will fail and the only winner are the founders who collect $600.

Sure, the individual professors handle tuition money and presumably the founders of this community thing don't take a cut, but IMO these volunteers are basically shoving value at them via the co-living rent and the accelerator course so that our happy-go-lucky founders are able to live a passive income lifestyle.

And again I realize I've made a lot of assumptions but when you're being literally sold something (a $600 course) skepticism is warranted.

Re: How to start a school with your friends

#75

Post by [deleted] »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #72
dangus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but you can logically figure out why many of those professions sought professional licensure and accreditation in the first place. It’s the same concept as “regulations are written in blood.”

Rather: regulators want to regulate.

[deleted]

Re: How to start a school with your friends

#76

Post by urda »

jbellis wrote: post #9

Love to see it! Wonder how to reconcile the description of almost-negligible admin overhead with this description of a similar effort that warns, "We wanted to keep costs extremely low, so we had parent volunteers do all admin for the school. It's going really well, but it's an insane amount of work." From my experience both teaching kids and organizing things, that seems like a much more likely outcome. https://x.co…

Honestly yeah, it seems like a great experience since you have a more-engaged student group.

Re: How to start a school with your friends

#77

Post by xrhobo »

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 majority of college students are not studying something that falls into these categories though.

It is completely absurd we have not built an alternative, online liberal arts 4 year degree that basically cost nothing.

There is absolutely no reason this could not be done for less than $1k a year right now.

I suspect a large reason is because the people who benefit from the cartel, basically every professional educator, like things as is. The massive education inflation cost is a feature for the cartel, not a bug.

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