Has anyone seen the September 2013 issue of Popular Mechanics? There is an article on pages 65-72 titled "Hacking Your Education".

I found the same article posted online at http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/education-2-0-fixing-the-broken-higher-ed-system-15805613

An interesting resource mentioned was Y Combinator (which reminded me somewhat of the Thiel Fellowship). I found Y Combinator online at http://ycombinator.com/

Has anyone else read this? Anyone participated? What are your thoughts?

I think the essays of Paul Graham http://paulgraham.com/articles.html , one of the founders of Y Combinator, are very interesting.

Y Combinator gives start-up founders, in return for an equity stake,
(1) a small stipend
(2) advice, and
(3) introductions

My eldest son likes to program. I have wondered if at age 17 I should give him the choice of $240K for college or $240K to spend as he sees fit, perhaps to work on a start-up idea. I can't provide (2) and (3) of Y Combinator's services, but I can do (1). The Tiger Mother will probably nix this idea.

Do you mean your personal TM? Or just in a general sense?

I plan to come back and add something here--

but I'm going to need more coffee first (PDT out here, it's still early).

Gaaa...

it's a relatively new international scholars program-- so a bit more like conventional higher ed in some respects, but the students move (as a cohort) around the globe every few months. Someone (here? or elsewhere?) brought it up recently during a discussion about higher ed, and I found the concept fascinating. I'll have to dig through some things to locate it. I'm having no luck uncovering it again with a search engine.

Some of these are interesting:

AERO's list of low-residency and alternative post-secondary schools

I sure wish that I could convince myself that St. John's is worth the cost. {sigh} DD would thrive in that environment.

A gap year, six months to identify and begin working at a niche business. Checkpoints for: identifying a market, developing a business plan, meeting with SCORE professionals, make a software development plan, begin programming.

If at six months the market & business plans aren't moving forward, then he shifts gear to working on a meaningful software project within the open source arena while building out a resume of specific contemporary/bleeding edge technologies. Cost: food and a roof + <$2000 for development tools.

Software is the cheapest arena to enter if you have the mindset, drive, and your own free technical skills.

Here are some other alternative post-secondary ideas:

The New Global Student: Skip the SA... and Get a Truly International Education

That book has some ideas that are truly feasible and flexible, and look to be right up the alley of a lot of HG+ kids.

(I'm going to come back and add a few more links that I've got stashed.)

My wife would be understandably wary. In theory the $240K cost of college is an investment in the future, while $240K just given to a young adult could be blown in many interesting ways.

But articles such as

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114744/luxification-college-dorms
Granite Countertops, Flat-Screen TVs, Fire Pits: The Surprising Story of How College Dorms Got Luxe
BY INGA SAFFRON
September 18, 2013
New Republic

make me wonder if college has become, for many children and their families, merely a respectable way to blow $240K under the guise of investment.

Yeah, we wonder that, as well. Living in a college town, we see some trends that certainly offer a compelling argument for the "four-year luxury vacation" theory.

I'm with Zen. If your son is accelerated, why not allocate a predetermined time to entrepreneurship with the aim of still attending university. Your marginal cost as parents would be pretty negligible. IMHO, having some real-world experience before university will make your son's studies more valuable to him because he'll already have a mental model of at least one industry that interests him and personal experience to leverage on the other side of his degree.

Also, at no future point in time will your son's ability to withstand risk and uncertainty be greater.

This information in the OP's link to Popular Mechanics caught my eye:


Back in the late 90s, I knew a number of people who had recently attended or were still enrolled at public colleges in California. They told me that students commonly took 5 years to graduate because of needing an upper-level class that was oversubscribed and only offered once per year. My understanding is that the situation is even worse now, and that 5 or even 6 years is the norm for many majors (e.g. engineering). For example, my friend's daughter had to take two chemistry courses over the summer just to finish a science degree in five years. So she lost a year of earnings and a chunk of summer earnings for the next school year on top of that. And there were those extra loans for the fifth year.

This problem apparently occurs in many states.

I guess a guarantee that you'll be able to take courses when you need them is one thing you pay for at a private college. But of course, this leads us right back to the question of the value of $60,000 a year for 8 classes, some institutional food, and a bed (more when most of the kids here are ready).

The president of the California Senate proposed requiring California universities to accept MOOC credits to alleviate this problem,

http://chronicle.com/article/A-Bold-Move-Toward-MOOCs-Sends/137903/
California's Move Toward MOOCs Sends Shock Waves, but Key Questions Remain Unanswered
March 14, 2013

but after they moved to expand their online offerings, he shelved the bill

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/california-puts-mooc-bill-on-ice/45215
California Puts MOOC Bill on Ice
August 1, 2013

Yes, true. Not exactly evidence of the colleges and universities here having the best interests of the students at heart. I don't know the details of how these courses will work, but I hope the universities won't be expecting the students to pay the same price for online courses that they pay for B&M courses.

I must be sitting pretty here in Canada, because inability to access courses required for graduation is something that hadn't entered my radar. That's galling!