All discussions about his article aside (whether it's a valid viewpoint at all; whether it makes any real arguments), it's a little unclear to me exactly what he's doing. Can anyone clarify?

I've looked at uncollege.org, and the "What" page tells me that it's "a social movement support self-directed higher education." This means very little sense to me, and I'm sure I'm not unique in that.

Then he elaborates:

(1) "Writing a book about learning from life." Wait, what? This says absolutely nothing! In order to help you learn on your own, I will write a book about helping you learn on your own. But this is terrifically unhelpful; "learning on your own" is a massive area that needs to be specific in order to be of any use at all. As it stands, it's really no different from "PowerPoint for Dummies"--which, while useful for some people, is hardly revolutionary in sparking people to consider not going to college.

(2) "Developing experiential learning programs at existing colleges that are truly student directed." Again, this says absolutely nothing to me. Of course we all want students to have valuable, interactive college experiences. The problem is in determining how to do that, not determining that it should be done!

(3) "Building a platform to validate self-directed learning, allowing people to demonstrate their talents in an online portfolio and bypass the college degree." This gets somewhere, I think--he's finally coming up with some sort of idea. But it's unclear how this is superior to existing solutions (people already provide portfolios and examples of past work, and standardized tests exist to address this to some degree), and--as with the other cases--the execution is critical.

I don't mean to condemn everything about Stephens here. It does sound like he's motivated toward a worthy cause, and while I think college still has value for a lot of people, I think success in this realm would be fantastic. But it seems clear to me that his ideas are very undeveloped, and I'm very skeptical of the likelihood of his success based on what I've seen so far. Thiel might think differently--that the fact that he dropped out indicates some drive and initiative that'll lead him to success--but I disagree, and think that this is just a prime example of why it's good for many people to study for a few years.

user:	jasonyyun
created:	January 2, 2011
karma:	45