tonight I wanted to tell you about my
trip to the University of Bologna this
summer I went back to the University of
Bologna to give a research paper and was
completely in my element because it was
a college town and I grew up in college
towns you kind of know what I’m talking
about I think and you know it was full
of students who are talking about
politics and philosophy and particle
physics and of course soccer at every
possible moment and they were showing
off the discoveries of new books they’d
found in these in these used bookstores
and it felt like exactly the kind of
learning environment I grew up in as a
child of university professors as a
lifelong member of the university
population and it was reassuring in fact
I had gone back to the University of
Bologna precisely for that reassurance
because I’ve been become increasingly
worried about the state of modern higher
education for the last 15 years and the
University of Bologna was the first
University the first college town the
place where everything started being
mixed in with all of the students
hearing all of their discussions and
feeling the solidity and the millennial
nature of this institution made me start
thinking well okay maybe we’re okay
maybe universities will just last
forever because it seems like they’ve
lasted for a long time so far you know
when the University of Bologna started
in the 9th century it was really just a
gathering of people who showed up from
all over because there were a lot of
people who wanted to learn something and
a lot of people who wanted to teach
something so the university didn’t
really become a university until several
hundred years after a gathering a
happening a plurality of learners who
joined at the crossroads of the two
major trade routes in Northern Europe so
people exchanging information from from
Europe to the East and from Italy to the
populations north of the Alps this is
the most incredible university seal ever
an incident
it’s also it was invented in the 19th
century this isn’t what it originally
looked like they needed a seal so it’s
off by a couple hundred years but the
alma mater through the autumn the the
alma mater of all alma mater
institutions started as a collective of
students referring to themselves as
Universitas because they came from all
different nations it was a collective
bargaining Society which allowed them to
hire instructors to teach exactly what
they wanted to learn during exactly the
time period they wanted to learn it they
had very strict and high standards about
faculty for example if you couldn’t fill
an auditorium you clearly were terrible
and you were fired if everybody slept
through your lecture then you were fired
and if you didn’t know your material you
guessed it you were fired so it was a
pretty rough time for academics and yet
it was an incredible time for learners
like Plato’s Grove this was a university
without diplomas credentials this was a
university without a curriculum students
designed it themselves
this was a university without that
incredibly complex course description
which explains how you get from your
first semester all the way to graduation
in only four years also like I said it
was a university without a seal until
they came up with one that nobody else
can top university classes were pretty
much the way University classes are now
which is also a puzzle why are we still
teaching the way we did a millennium ago
you may even notice that there are some
students talking to each other
and somebody’s asleep right which
I see you out there too okay anyway but
you know fundamentally we haven’t
changed the way we teach since that time
and this is proof now the only
difference is that there are a lot more
distractions for students in the
classroom so let me tell you what keeps
me up at night because I really truly am
worried about the modern university
about my home the first problem is
universities are exclusive in fact we’re
ranked primarily on the basis of how
many people we don’t accept universities
are largely research oriented therefore
faculty rewarded for lots of research
and yet have very little training when
they come in on how learners learn and
most heartbreakingly of all universities
are really really expensive at an
average of twenty thousand dollars a
year for a public four-year institution
forty thousand dollars a year for a
private four-year institution
the average university student loan debt
is thirty thousand dollars and that
doesn’t even that that includes the
fifty percent of students who don’t even
get the degree by the time they’re done
the other thing that is problematic to
me and probably keeps me up even more
nights is the fact that universities
have become remarkably complacent yes we
deliver wonderful face-to-face
engagement yes we have people who do
lots of great research and we share
information with our students and we
care about our students and yet waiting
in the wings have been a number of
really well-funded high-tech companies
in Silicon Valley looking at us sitting
on a four point six trillion dollar
global education market now tell me that
isn’t a target worth disrupting the
first big disruption started in 2011
with the announcement of a MOOC a
massively open online course that was
taught at Stanford University a hundred
and twenty thousand students worldwide
took it Wow and then universities
pointed out yeah but only two percent
completed it you know what I’ll bet you
if all of those hundred and twenty
thousand had been given a Stanford
credit for taking the course
you would have seen a lot more
completion rate so Coursera EDX
Udacity have all started to develop
courses well we’ve not paid as much
attention as we should have using new
methods of data gathering so every
single learner that they have is
generating big data all of those big
data are informing much more accurate
algorithms and those algorithms are
outputting classes which are in fact
online but adjustable reliable
individualized personalized able to move
with the needs of the student able to
set the bar just high enough that it’s a
challenge and not crushing frankly
they’re able to turn education into all
the best things about games speaking of
which I actually my used to be a
language professor and my very favorite
language class of all time was on
duolingo online for free because you
know if you didn’t practice that owl
might die
can we come up with an incentive like
that for regular classes I’m not sure
okay so here’s the truth
the university is facing a world in
which the Internet has all knowledge
available for free any student can go
anywhere to find any information we’re
not in the business to anymore providing
information we’re supposed to be in the
business of telling people how to
interpret information working with them
to understand their world and yet these
new courses which are powered by really
excellent machine learning are doing
precisely that so as we’ve not been
paying attention right now any single
one of you could cobble together an
entire college curriculum you know there
are at least 5,000 classes that would
count toward getting a not degree the
uncommon has popularized this we’re
getting a not degree and then going out
and trying to get a job
what’s the obstacle almost every job
description says they need a bachelor’s
degree or greater so the obstacle is not
the education and the learning the
obstacle is the credential as I paced
the streets of Bologna trying to find
solace and reassurance that the
university would last forever
I turned around and started ahead back
to my hotel and I ran almost directly
into the Roman wall this wall was built
a millennium ago and it protected
Bologna both the University in the city
from whatever horrors lay outside of it
and looking at that wall everything sort
of clicked into place and I said
blockchain so blockchain is a
mathematical technology it allows us to
put online a public ledger that is
accessible and and examinable by anyone
who has cryptographic access it every
ten minutes on average worldwide time
stamps transactions it actually would be
the exact kind of binding agent that we
could use to put together a curriculum
from all of the disparate elements that
are already out there and available it’s
called the trust
call and it’s on its path to replacing
any businesses that primarily profit by
by verifying the connections between two
strangers for example banks or
stockbrokers or maybe university
registrar’s so what I envision them is
the possibility of a personal blockchain
a personal building block by block of
all of the disparate components of one’s
education this might be github
recommendations or separate classes
you’ve taken from separate universities
or maybe that course you took over the
weekend and bookbinding or maybe the the
crash course you took in how to program
computers or you name it the idea being
that you can assemble your own
individual portable profile of your
education carry it with you and have it
be available on-demand to any potential
employer also discoverability its
searchable you could be found before you
even know there’s an employment
opportunity that exactly matches what
you want what I see happening as a
result of this is potentially something
really great now what happens to
universities I think lots of
universities are gonna have to scale
back retrench not try to do everything
focus on the very things that they do
best and not try to cover all topics but
I think also that universities are gonna
have to figure out how to change or
become completely irrelevant in this new
ecosystem in a global university we’re
going to need to be providing courses
just in time for lifelong learners on
schedules that lifelong learners can
handle and some of them may be in person
and a lot of them may be at a distance
and yet I think if we want to play in
this global ecosystem that really is our
only hope for survival
finally I would say that there’s huge
hope in this as well because right now
in the next three years 3.3 billion
people globally are going to become part
of the global middle class very little
money but hungry for education by 2030
that’s going to be 4.8 bill
people universities can serve millions
but a global university can serve the
billions who want to go forward and
educate themselves and we can also
streamline their their own individual
pathways toward the kind of education
they want because every option will be
available to them through both the
internet and the blockchain the future
is already here it’s just not evenly
distributed yet said William Gibson the
future is here all of the educational
components and all the technological
components are in place it’s just a
matter of a few years thank you very
much
[Applause]
you
trip to the University of Bologna this
summer I went back to the University of
Bologna to give a research paper and was
completely in my element because it was
a college town and I grew up in college
towns you kind of know what I’m talking
about I think and you know it was full
of students who are talking about
politics and philosophy and particle
physics and of course soccer at every
possible moment and they were showing
off the discoveries of new books they’d
found in these in these used bookstores
and it felt like exactly the kind of
learning environment I grew up in as a
child of university professors as a
lifelong member of the university
population and it was reassuring in fact
I had gone back to the University of
Bologna precisely for that reassurance
because I’ve been become increasingly
worried about the state of modern higher
education for the last 15 years and the
University of Bologna was the first
University the first college town the
place where everything started being
mixed in with all of the students
hearing all of their discussions and
feeling the solidity and the millennial
nature of this institution made me start
thinking well okay maybe we’re okay
maybe universities will just last
forever because it seems like they’ve
lasted for a long time so far you know
when the University of Bologna started
in the 9th century it was really just a
gathering of people who showed up from
all over because there were a lot of
people who wanted to learn something and
a lot of people who wanted to teach
something so the university didn’t
really become a university until several
hundred years after a gathering a
happening a plurality of learners who
joined at the crossroads of the two
major trade routes in Northern Europe so
people exchanging information from from
Europe to the East and from Italy to the
populations north of the Alps this is
the most incredible university seal ever
an incident
it’s also it was invented in the 19th
century this isn’t what it originally
looked like they needed a seal so it’s
off by a couple hundred years but the
alma mater through the autumn the the
alma mater of all alma mater
institutions started as a collective of
students referring to themselves as
Universitas because they came from all
different nations it was a collective
bargaining Society which allowed them to
hire instructors to teach exactly what
they wanted to learn during exactly the
time period they wanted to learn it they
had very strict and high standards about
faculty for example if you couldn’t fill
an auditorium you clearly were terrible
and you were fired if everybody slept
through your lecture then you were fired
and if you didn’t know your material you
guessed it you were fired so it was a
pretty rough time for academics and yet
it was an incredible time for learners
like Plato’s Grove this was a university
without diplomas credentials this was a
university without a curriculum students
designed it themselves
this was a university without that
incredibly complex course description
which explains how you get from your
first semester all the way to graduation
in only four years also like I said it
was a university without a seal until
they came up with one that nobody else
can top university classes were pretty
much the way University classes are now
which is also a puzzle why are we still
teaching the way we did a millennium ago
you may even notice that there are some
students talking to each other
and somebody’s asleep right which
I see you out there too okay anyway but
you know fundamentally we haven’t
changed the way we teach since that time
and this is proof now the only
difference is that there are a lot more
distractions for students in the
classroom so let me tell you what keeps
me up at night because I really truly am
worried about the modern university
about my home the first problem is
universities are exclusive in fact we’re
ranked primarily on the basis of how
many people we don’t accept universities
are largely research oriented therefore
faculty rewarded for lots of research
and yet have very little training when
they come in on how learners learn and
most heartbreakingly of all universities
are really really expensive at an
average of twenty thousand dollars a
year for a public four-year institution
forty thousand dollars a year for a
private four-year institution
the average university student loan debt
is thirty thousand dollars and that
doesn’t even that that includes the
fifty percent of students who don’t even
get the degree by the time they’re done
the other thing that is problematic to
me and probably keeps me up even more
nights is the fact that universities
have become remarkably complacent yes we
deliver wonderful face-to-face
engagement yes we have people who do
lots of great research and we share
information with our students and we
care about our students and yet waiting
in the wings have been a number of
really well-funded high-tech companies
in Silicon Valley looking at us sitting
on a four point six trillion dollar
global education market now tell me that
isn’t a target worth disrupting the
first big disruption started in 2011
with the announcement of a MOOC a
massively open online course that was
taught at Stanford University a hundred
and twenty thousand students worldwide
took it Wow and then universities
pointed out yeah but only two percent
completed it you know what I’ll bet you
if all of those hundred and twenty
thousand had been given a Stanford
credit for taking the course
you would have seen a lot more
completion rate so Coursera EDX
Udacity have all started to develop
courses well we’ve not paid as much
attention as we should have using new
methods of data gathering so every
single learner that they have is
generating big data all of those big
data are informing much more accurate
algorithms and those algorithms are
outputting classes which are in fact
online but adjustable reliable
individualized personalized able to move
with the needs of the student able to
set the bar just high enough that it’s a
challenge and not crushing frankly
they’re able to turn education into all
the best things about games speaking of
which I actually my used to be a
language professor and my very favorite
language class of all time was on
duolingo online for free because you
know if you didn’t practice that owl
might die
can we come up with an incentive like
that for regular classes I’m not sure
okay so here’s the truth
the university is facing a world in
which the Internet has all knowledge
available for free any student can go
anywhere to find any information we’re
not in the business to anymore providing
information we’re supposed to be in the
business of telling people how to
interpret information working with them
to understand their world and yet these
new courses which are powered by really
excellent machine learning are doing
precisely that so as we’ve not been
paying attention right now any single
one of you could cobble together an
entire college curriculum you know there
are at least 5,000 classes that would
count toward getting a not degree the
uncommon has popularized this we’re
getting a not degree and then going out
and trying to get a job
what’s the obstacle almost every job
description says they need a bachelor’s
degree or greater so the obstacle is not
the education and the learning the
obstacle is the credential as I paced
the streets of Bologna trying to find
solace and reassurance that the
university would last forever
I turned around and started ahead back
to my hotel and I ran almost directly
into the Roman wall this wall was built
a millennium ago and it protected
Bologna both the University in the city
from whatever horrors lay outside of it
and looking at that wall everything sort
of clicked into place and I said
blockchain so blockchain is a
mathematical technology it allows us to
put online a public ledger that is
accessible and and examinable by anyone
who has cryptographic access it every
ten minutes on average worldwide time
stamps transactions it actually would be
the exact kind of binding agent that we
could use to put together a curriculum
from all of the disparate elements that
are already out there and available it’s
called the trust
call and it’s on its path to replacing
any businesses that primarily profit by
by verifying the connections between two
strangers for example banks or
stockbrokers or maybe university
registrar’s so what I envision them is
the possibility of a personal blockchain
a personal building block by block of
all of the disparate components of one’s
education this might be github
recommendations or separate classes
you’ve taken from separate universities
or maybe that course you took over the
weekend and bookbinding or maybe the the
crash course you took in how to program
computers or you name it the idea being
that you can assemble your own
individual portable profile of your
education carry it with you and have it
be available on-demand to any potential
employer also discoverability its
searchable you could be found before you
even know there’s an employment
opportunity that exactly matches what
you want what I see happening as a
result of this is potentially something
really great now what happens to
universities I think lots of
universities are gonna have to scale
back retrench not try to do everything
focus on the very things that they do
best and not try to cover all topics but
I think also that universities are gonna
have to figure out how to change or
become completely irrelevant in this new
ecosystem in a global university we’re
going to need to be providing courses
just in time for lifelong learners on
schedules that lifelong learners can
handle and some of them may be in person
and a lot of them may be at a distance
and yet I think if we want to play in
this global ecosystem that really is our
only hope for survival
finally I would say that there’s huge
hope in this as well because right now
in the next three years 3.3 billion
people globally are going to become part
of the global middle class very little
money but hungry for education by 2030
that’s going to be 4.8 bill
people universities can serve millions
but a global university can serve the
billions who want to go forward and
educate themselves and we can also
streamline their their own individual
pathways toward the kind of education
they want because every option will be
available to them through both the
internet and the blockchain the future
is already here it’s just not evenly
distributed yet said William Gibson the
future is here all of the educational
components and all the technological
components are in place it’s just a
matter of a few years thank you very
much
[Applause]
you
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