The vision:

Development of skills instead of the memorizing of information. For example, teaching you how to think, not what to think. Pieces of information become outdated more easily than an array of skills.

Renaissance style Curriculum: Excessive specialization would be discouraged in favor of a more well-rounded approach. Philosophy, Music, Arts and Sciences as well as physical activities will make an essential part of one’s development as well as real life skills usually neglected at mainstream educational institutions, like:

The Art of Love & Seduction
Knowing Yourself
The Art of Listening
Understanding Women (30-year course. Pre-Requisite: The Art of Listening)
Understanding Men (30-minute course)

Project Based learning – You’d learn by doing not by regurgitating what other people have done. Your projects would be aimed to be as “real world” as possible, legitimate enough so that they can become part of your future CV. By the time you’re out of school you already have a “track-record”.

Entrepreneurship: The approach: “I get an education, then find a job” is outdated. Every week you will be encouraged to create your own company with the assistance of mentors who are successful in the real world giving you cutting edge advice on how to build and grow your idea into a business, whether profit or not profit. By the time you’re done with your degree you wouldn’t need to find a job because you would already have one.

Online Tools: The university would employ the latest array of Web 2.0+ tools for harnessing the collective intelligence for the benefit of all. Use the ideas of Bootstrapping as suggested by Doug Engelbart. The scope should be global and scalable.

Directed at All Ages: Learning is a life-long process. It’s not something you do when you were young and then are done with it. Older people need to have a way of re-educating themselves without leaving their current job & responsibilities. Multi-age classes sometimes make for a much richer learning experience for all.

Based on Alternative Business Models: Education should be accessible to all for free while at the same time being economically self-sustainable. Alternative business models are essential for achieving this vision. For example, students could pledge that a certain percentage of the profits or equity (1%-5%) that would come from their future activities will be donated back to the University that enabled them to pursue them.

Main Ability Cultivated: The ability to perceive, challenge, nurture and create value. It would help if you’re able to provide it to your fellow human beings in a form they can recognize and are able to reward so you can keep providing it. That reward need not be exclusively monetary.

Ultimately, a proper education should enable people to actualize their full potential, discover what is valuable in life and help them create it.

You can see my talk on the topic at the BIL conference that happened in Long Beach, CA on Feb. 7-8 2009 below:

Or the class (using the same presentation) I gave at StartupSchool.

A loving thank you to Elektra Schmidt for inspiration on this topic.