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.
typewithrhythm · 34m ago
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 outstanding, then you need to offer the best incoming candidates a reason to choose your school, because the truth is the school has less impact than the individual.
yupitsme123 · 20m ago
These are the sorts of hurdles that a wealthy, powerful, amd/or famous person could overcome. If Buffett University or Gates University opened tomorrow you'd have people clamoring to support it and attend it.
As for a draw, the US jniversity system is so flawed at this point that it wouldn't be hard to come up with something better.
2arrs2ells · 22m ago
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).
SteveNuts · 1h ago
It seems like all we’ve been able to do is churn out diploma mills with dubious (or outright fraudulent) accreditation.
vector_spaces · 1h ago
Or predatory/misleading payment schemes, a la Lambda School
fallingknife · 2m ago
What is predatory and misleading about it? I just looked it up and it's 17% of your next two years income. Seems pretty simple to me.
fallingknife · 10m ago
The university accreditation system is a cartel. You can't gain accreditation until you have already graduated students! So basically you have to find a group of students who are willing to risk studying at an unofficial university, then operate the university for several years before you can even apply for the stupid credential that allows you to issue degrees that anybody else recognizes. It clearly should be illegal, but like in so many other areas, the university system gets special treatment while continuing to suck up more and more resources for an ever diminishing return.
monero-xmr · 11m ago
Good teachers are expensive, but on top of that, so are all the facilities. Being accredited is required for Pell Grants and student loans. Can’t be accredited without a lot of horse shit like fully staffed research libraries loaded with books no one will ever read. Yet another higher ed racket
maxverse · 4h ago
The Recurse Center[1] folks (also YC) started an un-school with friends!
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.
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't need an accountant. It doesn't employ anyone. It doesn't need to worry about firing anyone.
My kids attended a small co-op school when they were young--5 employees (4 teachers + "director" who was mostly a floating assistant/substitute), everything else handled by parent volunteers. There's really an enormous amount of administrative overhead.
FractalU doesn't have any of that because it's not actually a school.
aleph_minus_one · 46m ago
> There's really an enormous amount of administrative overhead.
What kind of work does this administrative overhead in particular consist of?
CrazyStat · 45m ago
All the things I listed in the first paragraph.
ChrisMarshallNY · 2h ago
That looks very cool.
As someone that has given a number of classes and seminars, it gets fairly discouraging, how few folks want to learn.
I think that establishing a learning-focused community (like this) would probably really get a lot of people engaged.
Geeks like learning. Many others don't. It's always fairly demoralizing, when I encounter it.
vianarafael · 1h ago
This is such a refreshing inversion of the ‘edtech’ trend—rather than trying to scale education through software, FractalU scales motivation through community. Makes me wonder: instead of designing better UIs for MOOCs or LLM tutors, maybe the real unlock is designing better social containers for learning.
sakesun · 44m ago
Something to do while AI take care of other chores.
rahimnathwani · 1h ago
I love these sort of 'high agency', 'you can just do stuff' posts.
pcthrowaway · 1h ago
I read "How to Live Near your Friends"[1] article linked from this article, and I can't help but be amused by the author's attitude of "my friends should all move near me because that's the way we can all live near friends"
I mean they're not wrong, but also they could have made friends with their neighbours like the Stoop Coffee[2] author, or moved to be nearer to a friend group also. It's nice to see them really embracing their main character bias though (in this case, in a way that seemed to have successfully built a geographically aligned community)
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.
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 outstanding, then you need to offer the best incoming candidates a reason to choose your school, because the truth is the school has less impact than the individual.
As for a draw, the US jniversity system is so flawed at this point that it wouldn't be hard to come up with something better.
Two good colleges who’ve overcome the challenges recently are Olin (engineering school in Boston) and Minerva (globally distributed college).
[1] http://recurse.com/
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.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1917287461027459239
My kids attended a small co-op school when they were young--5 employees (4 teachers + "director" who was mostly a floating assistant/substitute), everything else handled by parent volunteers. There's really an enormous amount of administrative overhead.
FractalU doesn't have any of that because it's not actually a school.
What kind of work does this administrative overhead in particular consist of?
As someone that has given a number of classes and seminars, it gets fairly discouraging, how few folks want to learn.
I think that establishing a learning-focused community (like this) would probably really get a lot of people engaged.
Geeks like learning. Many others don't. It's always fairly demoralizing, when I encounter it.
I mean they're not wrong, but also they could have made friends with their neighbours like the Stoop Coffee[2] author, or moved to be nearer to a friend group also. It's nice to see them really embracing their main character bias though (in this case, in a way that seemed to have successfully built a geographically aligned community)
[1]: https://prigoose.substack.com/p/how-to-live-near-your-friend...
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43473618