HIGHER EDUCATION College Is Dead. Long Live Conege!

Can a new breed of online megacourses finally offer a college education to more people for less money? By Amanda Ripley "c::. ..

ON SEPT. 17. THE PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT SHUT DOWN ACCESS to YouThbe. The purported reason was to block the anti-Muslim film trailer that was inciting protests around the world. One little-noticed consequence of this decision was that 2IS people in Pakistan suddenly lost their seats in a massive, open online physics course. The free college-level class, created by a Silicon Valley start-up called Udacity, included hundreds of short YouThbevideos embedded on its website. Some 23,000 students worldwide had enrolled, including Khadijah Niazi, a pigtailed II-year-old in Lahore. She was on question six ofthe final exam when she encountered a curt message saying "this site is unavailable," Niazi was devastated. She'd worked hard to master this phys­ ics class before her 12th birthday, just one week away. Nowwhat?

33 HIGHER EDUCATION I REINVENTINO COllEGE

Head of the class Some 23 ,000 people enrolled in Andy Brown's physics course at Udacity

Niazi posted a lament on the class discussion Niazi not to write anything too negative the videos and then uploaded them to an board: "I am very angry, but I wiU not quit." about her government online. uncensored photo-sharing site. It took her In every country, education changes so None of these students had met one four hours, but it worked. The next day, slowly that it can be ha rd to detect progress. another in person. The class directory in­ Niazi passed the final exam with the high­ But what happened next was truly differ­ cluded people from 125 countries. But af­ est distinction. "Yayyyyyyy," she wrote in ent. Within an hour, Maziar Kosarifar, a terweeks in the class, helping one another a new post_(Actually, she used 43 .1"5, but young man taking the class in Malaysia, with Newton's laws, friction and simple you get the idea.) She was the youngest began posting detailed descriptions for harmonic motion, they'd started to feel girl ever to complete Udacity's Physics 100 Niazi of the test questions in each video. as if they shared the same carrel in the li­ class, a challenging course for the average Rosa Brigida, a novice physics professor brary. Together, they'd found a passageway college freshman. taking the class from Portugal, tried to into a rigorous, free,coUege-level class, and That same day, Niazi signed up for create a workaround so Niazi could bypass they weren't about to let anyone lock it up. Computer Science ror along with her twin YouTube; it didn't work. From England, By late that night, the Portuguese pro­ brother Muhammad. In England, William William, r2, promised to help and warned fessor had successfully downloaded all began downloading the videos for them. 34 Ivy League for the Masses Free MOOCs (massIve op('n onlIne courses) come with cachet "

TYP[OF For-profit For-profit Not-for­ \£:11 U profit

L '1/ H D January 201l Aprii20I2 May 2012

1100' An island unto 33 colleges so far, MIT and Harvard T • itself, the site was co­ including Princeton, have been joined founded by a former Stanford, Penn, Duke, by the University Stanford professor Ohio State and the of Texas and the University of Virginia University of California. Berkeley

least one online course, up from I in 10 in able to think, reason, code and calculate at 2003- but afterward, most are no better off higher levels than before. than they would have been at their local At the same time, the country that led community college. the world in higher education is now lead­ Now, several forces have aligned to re­ ing its youngest generation into adeep hole. vive the hope that the Internet (or rather, According to the Federal Reserve Bank of humans using the Internet from Lahore to New York, Americans owe some $914 bil­ Palo Alto, Calif.) may finally disrupt high­ lion in student loans; other estimates say ereducation-not by simply replacing the the total tops $1 trillion. That's more than distribution method but by reinventing the nation's entire credit-card debt. On aver­ High-End Learning on the Cheap the actual product. New technology, from age, a college degree still pays for itself(and THE HYPE ABOUT ONLINE LEARNING IS OLDER cloud computing to social media, has dra­ then some) over the course of a career. But than Niazi.ln the late '990S, Cisco CEO John matically lowered the costs and increased about 40% of students at four-year colleges Chambers predicted that "education over the odds of creating a decent online educa­ do not manage to get that degree within six the Internet is going to be so big, it is going tion platform. In the past year alone, start­ years. Regardless, student loans have to be to make e-mail usage look like a rounding ups like Udacity, Coursera and edX- each repajd; unlike other kinds of debt, they gen­ error." There was just one problem: online with an elite-university imprimatur­ erally cannot be shed in bankruptcy. The classes were not, generally speaking, very have put 219 college-level courses online, government can withhold tax refunds and good. To this day, most are dry, uninspired free of charge. Many traditional colleges garnish paychecks until it gets its money affairs, consisting of a patchwork of online are offering classes and even entire degree back-stifling young people's options and readings, written Q&As and low-budget programs online. Demand for new skills their spending power. lecture videos. Many students nevertheless has reached an all-time high. People on ev­ For all that debt,Americans are increas­ pay hundreds of dollars for these c1asses- 3 ery continent have realized that to thrive ingly unsure about what they are getting. in 10 college students report taking at in the modern economy, they need to be Three semesters of college education have TIME October 29. 2012 35 HIGHER EDUCATION R£IN\I£NTINO COllEGE

Degrees of Difficulty Tuition keeps rising. but so does the need for more graduates

Tuition Costs States are reducing per-student funding to colleges Are Soaring Change in state spending on public colleges and universities, 2006-11 Higher rates are fueled s28,5OO in part by a weak economy and lower tax revenues eIII\- 20% - 10 0"-10 Tuition and fees­ excluding room vt. MAINE and board­ inflatiorradjusted ... N.Y. ~ MAS5. rCOO

OKlA. BIGGEST CUT -32% twS

U.S. AVERAGE -. -13% HAWAII ..

Student debt loads are increasing Having fewer degrees threatens our global competitiveness Percentage Average debt with debt (2011 dollars, People In the workforce with a college degree 162

$14,500 'SO •••-;, "'161 OECD ...... '127 COUNTRIES ••• .•• .• 100 ~. • ... 1993 $26,600 CHINA ...... ;NDI A .., 66% 2011 50Z~ 7~:: ...~-54 ~u . s . The default rate was 5.6% in 1999. Or.--~--~--,---, 2011 In 2010 it was 9.1% 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 Of PROIECTED

Today's College Students, in Brief

There are more of them More undergrads An Increasing number They are older need remedial come from low- College enrollment In the V.S. 10.6 Percentage starting M1UIDN classes Income families college at age 19 or olde F.. _ 7.8 Recipients of Pell "",,,. Grants (money the federal government gives to low 28% mcome 2000 14% students) 196 7

1 970 20ll 1970 20 11 36% 29% TWO-YEAR SC HOOL FOUR·YEAR SCHOOL 2007 2011

36 a "barely noticeable" impact on critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills, according to research published in the 201I book Academically Adrift. In a new poll sponsored by TIME and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, 80% of the 1,000 U.S. adults surveyed said that at many col· Attending College Is Still a Smart Move leges, the education students receive is not Higher education is costly, but a degree is still a valued worth what they pay for it. And 41% of the commodity. College graduates earn more than the.r less $4.2 540coUege presidents and senior ad_minis· educated counterparts $3.5 "'''''''' trators surveyed agreed with them. ""1lUON Arriving at this perilous intersection of What Americans eam In a lifetime by highest high demand, uneven supply and absurd educational attainment, prices are massive open online courses in 2011 dollars $2.4 (endowed with the unfortunate acronym MIWON MOOCs), which became respectable this $1.8 year thanks to investments from big-name $1.6 "''''''' brands like Harvard, Stanford and MIT. Venture capitalists have taken a keen in­ terest too, and the business model is hard to resist: the physics class Niazi was taking cost only about $2 per student to produce. Already, the hyperventilating has outpaced reality; desperate parents are praying that free online universities will fi · iLESS IHIGH ISOME ASSOCIATE'S BACH ELO R'S MASTER"S DOCTORAL PROFESSIONAL '"AN SCHOOL COLLEGE DEGREE DEGREE DEGREE DEGREE DEG REE nallypop the tuition bubble- and nervous HIGH GRADUATE (two-year) (four.year) SCHOOL college officials don't want to miss out on a t j potential gold rush, The signs of change are everywhere, and so are the signs of panic. Percentage more that those with This spring, Harvard and MIT put $60 mil· a bachelor's degree can expect to earn lion into a nonprofit MOOC (rhymes with in their lifetime compared with those In 1975 the with only a high school diploma gap was 50% duke) venture called edX. A month later, 77% the president of the University of Virginia abruptly stepped down- and was then quickly reinstated- after an anxious By 2020, 65% of all jobs will require postsecondary education board member read about other universi­ U.S. workforce ties' MOOCs in the Wall Street Journal. by educauon 1973 One way or another, it seems likely that level more people will eventually learn more BACHELOR'S HIGH SCHOOL HIGH SCHOOL for less money. Finally. The next question SOM' D£GREE DROPOUT GRADUATE COLLEGE OR HIGHER might be, Which people?

2020 How the Brain Learns PROIECTED ••L _"'::=:':"_ THIS FALL, TO GLIMPSE THE FUTURE OF higher education, I visited classes in brick­ and-mortar colleges and enrolled in half a dozen MOOCs. I dropped most of the latter because they were not very good. Or rather, they would have been fine in person, nestled in a I9th century hall at How they cover RELATIVES/ Percentage who graduate on time Princeton University. but online, they FRIENDS college costs could not compete with the other distrac­ Students' funding 4% sources. 2012 tions on my computer. 58% 30% I stuck with the one class that held FOUR·YEAR SCHOOL TWO-YEAR SCHOOL my attention, the physics class offered (within six years) (within three years) by Udacity. I don't particularly like phys­ 29% ics, which is why I'd managed to avoid TIME Graphic by Deirdre van 0)+;. Leslie Dickstein and Claire Manlbog studying it for the previous 38 years. PARENTAL SOureM: HICI* EdUCMlon ResoaardI lfIItIIIIte. UCLA; Slllil INCOME/ What surprised me was the way the class MM; HCa; ~~efStm ....tIiNI; FWJd: SAVINGS 8LS;!be CoIeIt Son; sua ..... ~ ~ was taught. It was designed according to 28% 0ft'Icert.; ~ CInter" ~ lind Ibe Wor1doII;e; how the brain actually learns. In other -""" ...... words, it had almost nothing in common 37 HIGHER EDUCATION REINVENTING COLLEGE

College Tour: Four Approaches to Physics Ior

HI;>; rI Tl( • TT

I \PF Ot SCHOOL Elite four-year private Less selective public Mostlyonline MOOC university university university

Sl.lMBtROr 150 - 200 15-20 20 23,000 "n f)['\OtS\\HOF'lriItOIJ IN 1 HI':( LASS

\T\1:BfR Of HOl R~ Of Five hours per week for 5% hours per week for Four hours ofinteractive Nine hours total; I sYnc 10\ IS weeks IS weeks contact for five weeks goat your own pace

Llt\SS IOa.\.IAT Three in-person lectures Two in-person lectures Entirely online Entirelyonline per week as well as a led by a professor section meeting Jed by per week teaching assistants

LAB Yes Yes Yes (virtual) No

S1 ,225 for D.C. residents, 1 t:JTION PlR CUS 18 $1,399 for metro-area $1, 5 ,0 residents

I RfDIl$ TOWARD,~ Yes Yes Yes No co Ie UfGRE

Only 1,2oocompleted the final exam. In September, Colorado State University'sonline·only Global Campus began offering transfer credits to Udacity's computer-science students who take the final exam at a secure testing facility; that option is not yet available for other Udacity classes

with most classes I'd taken before. Minute 4: Professor Brown asked me a they haven't seen before. They've memo­ Minute I: Physics 100 began with a question. "What did the Greeks know?" rized the information, but they haven't whirling video montage of Italy, slow­ The video stopped, patiently waiting for learned it- much to their teachers' surprise. motion fountains and boys playing soccer me to choose one of the answers, a task In a study published in the journal Sci­ on the beach. It felt a little odd, like Rick that actually required some thought. This encein 2011, a group of researchers conduct· Steves' Physics, but it was a huge improve· happened every three minutes or so, mak· ed an experiment on a large undergraduate ment over many other online classes I ing it difficult for me to check my e-mail or physics class at the University of British Co­ sampled, which started with a poorly lit otherwise disengage-even for a minute. lumbia. For a week, one section of the class professor staring creepily into a camera. "You got it right!" The satisfaction of received its normal lecture from a veteran, When the Udacity professor appeared, correctly answering these questions was highly rated professor; another section was he looked as if he were about 12; in fact, he surprising. (One MOOC student I met taught by inexperienced graduate students was all of 25. "I'm Andy Brown, the instruc­ called it "gold-star methadone.") The ques­ using strategies developed from research tor for this course, and here we are, on loca­ tions weren't easy, either. I got many of into human cognition. Those strategies mjr· tion in Siracusa, Italy!" He had a crew cut them wrong, but I was allowed to keep rored those in Udacity's class. The students J and an undergraduate degree from MIT; he trying until I got the gold-star fix. worked in small groups to solve problems did not have a Ph.D. or tenure, which would Humans like immediate feedback, with occasjonal guidance from the instruc· turn out to be to his advantage. which is one reason we like games. Re­ tor_ They got frequent feedback. In the ex­ "This course is really designed for searchers know a lot about how the brain perimental group with novice instructors, anyone ... In Unit I, we're going to be· learns, and it's shocking how rarely that attendance increased 20% and students did gin with a question that fascinated the knowledge influences our education sys­ twice as well on an end·of-week test. Greeks: How big is our planet?" To an· tem_Studies of physics classes in particular Minute 8: Professor Brown explained that swer this question, Brown had gone to have shown that after completing a tradi­ Plato had also tried (and failed) to estimate the birthplace of Archimedes, a math­ tional class, students can recite Newton's the earth's circumference. Brown did this by ematician who had tried to answer the laws and maybe even do some calculations, jotting notes on a simple white screen. Like same question over 2,000 years ago. but they cannot apply the laws to problems all the other videos in the course, this 38 clip lasted only a few minutes. This too reflects how the brain learns. Studies of college students have shown that they can focus for only IO to 18 minutes before their minds begin to drift; that's when their brains need to do something with new information- make a connection or use it to solve a problem. At this point in the Udacity class, three video clips into the experience. about 15,000 students were still paying atten­ tion, according to the company's metrics. But that's actually high for a MOOe. (Since it requires little effartand no cost to enroll, lots of people dip in and out of these classes out of curiosity. Only I in 10 of those en· rolled in a Udacity class typically makes it all the way to a course's last video.) like most other cnli ne classes, it was asynchro­ nous, so I could rewind or leave and come back whenever J wanted. This also accords with how the brain works: humans like au­ tonomy. If they learn best late at night, they like to learn at night, on their own terms. Minute 57: After 47 fa st-paced videos spliced with pop quizzes, I did actually know how big the earth was. Brown had reviewed geometry and trigonometry with examples from actual life. And when itcame time to put it all together, I got to see him measure a shadow that formed a right tri­ angle, setting up a mathematical proportion to calculate the circumference of the earth, just like an ancient mathematician. "Congratulations!" he said. "This is Thrun co-founded Udacity after teaching a massive online course at Stanford really incredible, what you can do now." Then he asked the class to send in videos of themselves measuring shadows. I was cord ing to how the brain learns. He is not says Thrun. So he changed the software skeptical. Would people actually do this? proud of this fact. "I followed established to let students try and try until they got it Yes, they would. The first video was from wisdom," he says. His students, who were right. He also paid attention to the data, and a young woman in Tampere, Finland-a used to traditionallectures, gave him high he had a lot of it. When tens of thousands drummer who wanted to change her ca­ marks on his course eva luations. They of students all got the same quiz problem reer. There she was, with yellow dread­ didn't know what they were missing. wrong, he reali zed that the question was locks, measuring a shadow in a parking lot. In 20Il Thrun and fellow professor Pe­ not clear, and he changed it. And the stu­ Another woman submitted photos of her­ ter Norvig decided to put their Artificial dents themselves transformed other parts self completing the experiment in Texas, Intelligence class online. But when they of the class, building online playgrounds to plus a poem. A poem! "We solve for C, and sampled other online courses, they rea l­ practice what they were learning and even long at last! stalk a route into our own past." ized that most of them were mediocre. To translating the class into 44 languages. The Finn cheered. "Super artistic!" captivate students from afar, they would Meanwhile, Thrun had told his Stan­ Brown showed the poem around the need to do something different. So they ford students they could take the class on­ Udacity office. One student did the experi­ started planning lessons that would put line if they didn't want to attend lectures. ment at o degrees latitude in Ecuador. Many the student at the center of everything. More than three-quarters of them did so, more people posted questions; within min­ They created a series of problems for stu­ viewing the videos from their dorms and utes, they got detailed, helpful answers dents to solve so that they had to learn by participating as if they were thousands of from other students. It was as if a whole doing, not by listening. miles away. Then something remarkable pop-up learning community had material­ By last fall, 160,000 people had en­ happened. On the midterm, the Stanford ized overnight, and it was strangely alive. rolled. But the class was not particu­ students scored a full letter grade higher larly inspiring- at first. One student on average than students had in previous Turning Down Professors complained that the software allowed yea rs. They seemed to be learning more WHEN HE WAS A TENURED PROFESSOR AT students to try each problem only once. "I when they learned online. The same bump Stanford, Sebastian Thrun, the CEO and realized, 'Wow, I'm setting students up for happened after they took the final. co-founder of Udacity, did not teach ac- failure in my obsession to grade them,''' Still, the Stanford students were not

TIME October 29. 20 1l 39 HIGHER EDUCATION REINVENTIfilG COLLEGE

the stars of the class. At the end of the semester, not one of the course's 400 top performers had a Stanford address. Critical Thinking The experience forced Thrun to re­ think everything he knew about teaching, The TIME /Carnegie Corporation survey asked u.s. adults and and he built Udacity upon this reordering college leaders about the crisis in postsecondary education of the universe. Unlike Coursera, another for-profit Mooe provider- which has The Value of Cost of College partnered with dozens of schools, includ­ Higher Education At many colleges. the education ing Stanford, Princeton and, more recent­ What is the most important reason students receive is not worth what ly, the University of Virginia- Udacity people should go to college? they pay for it selects, trains and films the professors who teach its courses. Since it launched in C~N~'AL GIINIIAL POP ULATION POPULATION ~,••• January, Udacity has turned down about Yes 500 professors who have volunteered 80% Strongly 41% To gain skills and • to teach, and it has canceled one course knowledge for e career or someWhat agree (a math class that had already enrolled To ,aln a w&ll-(Ollnded • 20,000 students) because of subpar quality. general edllcatlon The average debt load for college Right now, most Mooe providers do • seniors who took out loans not make a profit. That can't continue for­ To Increase one's • and graduated in 2010 was ... • earnln, power ever. Udacity will probably charge for its classes one day, Thrun says, but he claims To become an Inlormed • • cllizen In a global society the price will stay very low; if not, he pre­ $25,250 dicts, a competitor will come along and • T.'~m " .."k ...... , _ Is that. steal away his students. Udacity does not offer a degree, since To totmlliate goals and • Too High Reasonable • vailiell lor life Amount it's not an accredited university. Students GINE.AL get a ceremonial certificate in the form of POP ULATION a PDF. Grades are based on the final exam. At• many colleges. there Is too much of a disconnect between the courses Students who choose to take the final for offered and students' career goals Udacity's computer-science course at an

CENE.AL independent testing center (for $89) can POPULATION get transfer credits from Colorado State Strongly or 83% 50% somewhat agree 74% University- Global Campus, an online­ only school. There IS too much emphasis on What are the biggest factors Getting more colleges to accept trans­ attending four-year college as contributing to the overall rising fer credits would be nice, but in the longer costs of college? opposed to community college or term, Udacity aims to cut out the middle­ vocational school 73% Cuts In govemmenl spending man and go straight to employers. This CIINIIAL PO PULATlON..... ", ... _ .. Percentage week, Udacity announced that six compa­ .... Strongly or of college nies, including Google and Microsoft, are ..., ""__ .. someWhat agree leaders who ranked sponsoring classes in skills that are in short this first or supply, from programming 3-D graphics to The government should tie funding to second measurements of how much students Expanding access building apps for Android phones. learn in cOllege to tradilionaJJy Meanwhile, about 3,000 students underserved students GENE IAL WasIl! and have signed up for Udacity's employer­ POPULAT' ON 19% millmanagement connection program, allowing their CVs Strongly or 14% Easy access to be shared wjth 350 companies. Employ­ somewhat agree ...... to low-Interest student loans ers pay Udacity a fee for any hires made - • 1 through this service. So far, about 20 stu­ , l dents have found work partly through Online Education Students will not learn as Udacity's help, Thrun says. Tamir Duber­ Much of the teaching on college campuses much In online courses as they will stein, 24, who studied mechanical engi­ can be replaced by online courses in traditional classes neering in Ontario, recently got two job

GINEIAL CIiNE _ AL offers after completing six Udacity courses. POPULATION POPULATION He took one of the offers and now works at 68% a software company in Sa n Francisco. Strongly or somewhat Still, it will be a long time before compa­ agree nies besides high-tech start-ups trust any­ thing other than a traditional degree. That's The Tl ME/Clme", C~tIoft 01 New VorIL poll, colldueted OIIIIM by GIK CVslom R.H.fCh North Ametlu. Alf¥tJed • "1IIon,' l-llllpie 01 1.000 U.S ...... 11 ••Dd S40 _lor ",mI.l_ors II. publle .... prIo.1t! hwo- . noIIOUI·l"'a, coiIeCe, and unlYenltla why hundreds of thousands of people a year enroll in the University of Phoenix, which 40 •, most students attend online. Says Univer­ I ~1n ~ n important places. For the next hour, sity of Phoenix spokesman Ryan Rauzon: Khatri called on every student to answer "They need a degree, and that isn't going to questions and solve problems; just as on change anytime soon." The class felt Udacity, they couldn't zone out for long. Three weeks later, I returned to Khatri's MOOCs vs. the College Campus like a luxury car: cl ass. He was about a week behind the TO COMPARE MY ONLINE EXPERIENCE WITH Udacity pace, and his quizzes were easier. a traditional class, I dropped into a physics But not a single student had dropped his course at Georgetown University, the op­ exquisitely class. And when I asked a group of stu­ posite of a MODe. Georgetown admitted dents if they would ever take this class on­ only 17"10 of applicants last fall and, with wrought.an d line, they answered in unison: "No way." annual tuition of $42,360, charges the At this stage, most MOOCswork well for equivalent of about $4,200 per class. expenSIve students who are self-motivated and already The university's large lecture course for fairly well educated. Worldwide, the poorest introductory physics accommodates 150 to students still don't have the background (or 200 students, who receive a relatively tradi­ the Internet bandwidth) to participate in a tional classroom experience- which is to major way. Thrun and his MOOC competi- say, one not designed according to how the tors may be setting out to democratize edu­ brain learns. The professor, who is new to who has been teaching for 37 years and yet cation, but it isn't going to happen tomorrow. the course, declined to let me visit. seemed genuinely excited to get to his first What is going to happen tomorrow? But Georgetown did allow me to ob- day of class in a new semester. It seems likely that very selective-and serve Physics 151, an introductory class "They hate physics," he said about his very unselective- colleges will continue for science majors, and I soon understood students, smiling. "You will see. They are to thrive. At their best (and I was only al­ why. This class was impressively nontra­ terrified." He led me to his classroom, a lab lowed to witness their best, it's worth ditional. Three times a week, the professor with fluorescent lights and a dull yellow noting), Georgetown and UDC serve a *- delivered a lecture, but she paused every linoleum floor. His 20 students were mostly purpose in a way that cannot easily be rep­ IS minutes to ask a question, which her 34 young adults with day jobs, which is why licated online. The colleges in the middle, students contemplated, discussed and then they were going to school at night. Many though-especially the for-profit ones answered using handheld clickers that let hoped to go to medical school one day, and that are expensive but not particularly her assess their understanding. There was they needed to take physics to get there. prestigious-will need to work harder to a weekly lab-an important component Khatri started the class by asking the justify their costs. missing from the Udacity class. The stu­ students to introduce themselves. "I took Ideally, Udacity and other MOOC pro­ dents also met once a week with a teaching physics in high school," said one woman, a viders will help strip away all the distrac­ assistant who gave them problems designed biology major, "and it was the hardest class tions of higher education-the brand, the to trip them up and had them work in small I ever had." price and the facilities- and remind all groups to grapple with the concepts. "I'm about to change that!" Khatri shout­ of us that education is about learning. In The class felt like a luxury car: exqui­ ed. Another young woman said, "I took cal­ addition to putting downward pressure on sitely wrought and expensive. Fittingly, culus online, and it was just awful." It felt student costs, it would be nice if MOOCs it met in a brand-new, state-of-the-art more like a support group than a college put upward pressure on teaching quality. $100 million science center that included course. Then Khatri detailed his rules for By mid-October, YouTube remained 12 teaching labs, six student lounges and a the class. "Please turn the cell phones off," dark in Pakistan, and the power blinked cafe. It was like going to a science spa. he said in a friendly voice. "Not on vibrate. out for about four hours a day at Niazi's Elite universities like Georgetown are I will know. I will take it away. Cell phones home in Lahore. But she had made it half­ unlikely to go away in the near future, as are a big disaster for the science classes." way through Computer Science 101 any­ even Udacity's co-founder (and Stanford Khatri had less than one-half of r"lo of way, with help from her classmates. alum) David Stavens concedes. "I think the students that Professor Brown had on Niazi loved MODCs more than her own the top 50 schools are probably safe," he Udacity, but he was helping them with school, and she wished she could spend says. "There's a magic that goes on inside a many skills beyond physics. He was culti­ all day learning from Andy Brown. But university campus that, if you can afford vating discipline and focus, rebuilding con­ when I asked her if she would get her de­ to live inside that bubble, is wonderful." fidence and nurturing motivation. "Please gree from Udacity University, if such a Where does that leave the rest of the complain if you aren't learning," he said thing were possible, she demurred. She country's 4.400 degree-granting colleges? more than once. had a dream, and it was made of bricks. "I After all, only a fifth of freshmen actually After a full hour of introductions and would still want to go to Oxford or Stan­ live on a residential campus. Nearly half at­ expectations, Khatri started reviewing ford," she said. "I would love to really meet tend community colleges. Many never ex­ geometry and trigonometry so that the my teachers in person and learn with the perience dorm life, let alone science spas. To students would have enough basic math whole class and make friends- instead of return to reality, I visited the University of to begin. He did this in far more detail being there in spirit." the District of Columbia (UDC)-a school than Brown had on Udacity, and it was • that, like many other colleges, is not ranked clear from their questions that many of the Ripley, a TIME contributing writer, is by US. News 8- World Report. students needed this help. As with most an Emerson Fellow at the New America When 1arr ived at the UDC life-sciences other Americans, their math and science Foundation, where she is writing a book about building, 1 met Professor Daryao Khatri, background was spotty, with big holes education around the world

TIME October 29. 2012 41