Academia never had to change now its dire

[Music]

it’s graduation day

at the small new england college where

my dad taught

it’s a burst of color and excitement

when i was little he’d carry me up on

shoulders and i’d marvel

at the pageantry i loved the wizard-like

academic robes that all the professors

wore

my father explained how you could tell

what degree someone had and the school

they’d gone to

based on the color and design of their

gown and hood

it was like a diploma a credential that

you could wear

i couldn’t wait to have one of my own

my dad taught biochemistry for decades

and was one of those

beloved professors graduation for him

was

a frenzy of thankful hugs and handshakes

eager introductions to parents countless

careers in science and medicine

were launched in his bio 101 class

and it was clear he made a difference

i suppose i inherited a love of teaching

from my dad

and i plan to be a professor just like

him

i headed to grad school to do a phd

studying microbiology

and biochemistry but along the way

my dad’s path and mine started to

diverge

during long days in lab i got impatient

i wanted to teach i didn’t want to wait

to graduate and do a post-doc

spend years navigating a treacherous job

market

so i turned to the internet which was

breaking down the barriers to entry and

removing the traditional gatekeepers

in many established fields for my

kitchen table

i started recording tutorial videos

teaching the basics of chemistry

using simple hand-drawn diagrams

and i put the videos on youtube and

people actually started watching them

first a few folks and then more and then

more

thank you emails poured into my inbox i

wasn’t a professor yet i hadn’t even

finished my phd

but i was helping students all over the

world get through

their chemistry classes i got the sense

that

something big was brewing here

but my dad would hear none of it

when i explained that i was thinking

about abandoning the traditional

professorship route to explore this new

world of online education

he exploded in anger oh

tyler you have to be an idiot to think

that anyone would care about this stupid

youtube thing

i shot back with a dig i said

every single day my videos teach

10 times as many students as you’ll

teach in your whole career

it would have really hurt if you’d had

any conception of

what i was trying to describe

but maybe he was afraid to think about

the way his

world steeped in tradition

was on the brink of change it used to be

that students had

one professor the one standing at the

front of the lecture hall

but increasingly if that professor

wasn’t a good fit

students could go online and seek out

videos from

other educators to help them learn it

was like an

online marketplace where students could

essentially

choose their own professor and it was

free

some of these video creators were

instructors from institutions

but others could be brilliant teachers

who didn’t even have a college degree

students chose the teachers that helped

them learn

best and most popular teachers

rose to the top i wanted to bring my dad

into this new world i suggested we

create a video series for intro biology

his lectures crafted and perfected over

decades

took terrifying subjects like the krebs

cycle and transcription and made them

crystal clear

and beautiful they could help millions

of students a day

why would any other college need a bio

101 professor i joked

but it was something i’d seriously

thought about a lot

what if you identified a few incredibly

talented educators like my dad

and gave them essentially limitless

resources content editors and animators

and production teams

and they were able to devote all day

every day

to making incredible beautiful

educational content

it seemed like this could fundamentally

change a field

where many professors all around the

world were teaching

essentially similar courses particularly

at the introductory level

but each professor rarely had the time

and resources to go all in

incredible education content felt like

something

that could scale a key concept

driving so many of the new revolutions

in tech

you could be the world’s biology teacher

i said

oh you’d have to be an idiot to think

that i’d want to be some kind of youtube

star

oh i was furious

and then shortly thereafter

unexpectedly he died

right before i graduated from mit

it upended my life but there was a

silver lining

that felt slightly cosmic

he left me a little bit of money that

allowed me to step

off the academic path and try my own

thing

i poured myself into work churning out

videos day

and night and i also started to interact

more with my viewers

and i learned that they were almost all

folks who weren’t served well

by the rigid structure of traditional

academia

countless college students told me how

they did all their learning from videos

like mine

they attended class only three or four

times during a semester

just to take the tests others

were trying to switch careers in middle

age and they needed to take courses

piecemeal

they needed half of this degree and a

quarter of this one

a single dad writes me and says how he’s

trying to go to nursing school

to show his young daughters he can be

something

he can’t understand a word his professor

says but my videos

get him through a critical class

comments like his are often followed by

an ominous

so why am i paying the school and not

paying you

i wonder why these people have to go

through the motions of attending a class

when they’re learning all the material

on their own why can’t they get course

credit in other ways

why isn’t anyone paying attention to

what these people

need i can’t offer diplomas

for my youtube channel but once there’s

a way

for students to earn course credit no

matter how they learned the material

in class or on their own the online

marketplace of different teachers

different learning approaches will

explode

there would be serious competition for

who could teach

students the best meanwhile

as i madly upload videos my views go

through the

roof job offers start to come in

random people start recognizing me on

the street

an awkward hey um

do you make youtube videos it’s followed

by hugs and handshakes

selfies and even occasional tears

around this time my career moves

from the lecture hall to the laboratory

i joined a company focused on education

for pharmaceutical

and life sciences companies the ceo

is bold and eccentric and she wants to

push the envelope

and teach complex lab methods entirely

in virtual reality outside of academia

things move fast

and the stakes are different the goal

for me

used to be a final exam grade

now it’s a patient’s health a

life-saving therapy

for the team i joined it was a rare

chance to think deeply

about lab instruction in undergrad i

rarely knew what i was doing in labs

a couple drops of this and a couple

drops of that and poof

it would turn red test tubes would break

if

frazzled ta tried to guide 30 students

at the same time

but vr can be a consistent

constantly vigilant one-on-one coach a

learner can practice activities

over and over until they truly

understand what they’re doing

and why they’re doing it students don’t

need

an instructor or a ta the software

does the teaching put on a vr headset

and you don’t need a multi-million

dollar microbiology laboratory

to teach microbiology and it’s clear

that academia isn’t the only player

that can provide high quality learning

even

in advanced technical fields coding

bootcamps have received a lot of

attention

giving credentials that allow folks to

transition into programming roles

but with vr you could imagine companies

offering

biotech credentials and teaching lab

skills needed to say

manufacture cutting-edge cell and gene

therapies

when you look at all these forces

together it’s clear

that real change is going to come in

higher education

when i was up there on my father’s

shoulders those colored robes at

graduation

represented discrete credentials earned

from classroom and research time

at specific schools maybe the

metaphorical

academic robe of the future is more of a

patchwork

cape a discussion class taken in person

at mit

an introductory content certification

passed with the help of youtube videos

a vr laboratory course from a company

outside of academia

graduation is unlikely to be a single

defined event and learners

instead of institutions

will have the power to decide what sort

of credentials they need

and when and how they master the

prerequisites

the impact of covet is likely to only

accelerate this

even the most prestigious schools are

now giving credit for courses completed

online it’s going to be tough to put

that genie

back into the bottle and hopefully the

specter of these changes will force

colleges and universities to double down

on what they can uniquely provide

maybe that’s getting students to dive

into research

they’re providing valuable one-on-one

time with professors

fostering discussions and mentorship mit

has always been on the forefront

of innovation and there’s a unique

opportunity here

for to lead academia into this new

future

but look i i know how hard this change

is going to be

my father who is a brilliant educator

couldn’t see it or or didn’t want to see

it you’d have to be an idiot

to think that anything was going to

change

but at the same time he valued learning

over all else like many other great

teachers

he used to say the focus of education

should be learning

not teaching these new paths of teaching

of certification they’re not

trivial shortcuts they’ll help students

master the same fundamental skills

just more effectively more efficiently

you know i think back to the first time

i tried the virtual reality lab product

i’d helped to build a team of so many

brilliant talented people had worked on

it for months

i slipped on the vr headset and there i

was

a lab bench in front of me the focus

was a fundamental microbiology method

it was probably one of the first things

my dad learned when he was in grad

school

and it was one of the first things that

i learned

i wondered for a moment what he would

have thought

if he could have seen this i imagined

somewhat hopefully of course that he’d

look around in the headset

grab a petri dish sterilize his metal

tools in the bunsen burner

until they glowed a bright orange and

maybe he’d say

with one of his trademark phrases whoa

this is pretty nifty you would have to

be an

idiot if you can’t tell this

is the future of education

thank you