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The a16z Show

Fixing Higher Education & New Startup Opportunities with Marc and Ben

The a16z Show

a16z

Technology, Culture, Disruption, Science, Entrepreneurship, Software Eating The World, Business, Innovation

4.21.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2024

⏱️ 120 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

"The Ben & Marc Show" features a16z's co-founders Ben Horowitz & Marc Andreessen. In this episode, Marc and Ben continue their in-depth exploration of the current education system. While Part I of their discussion unpacked the crisis facing higher education, Part II presents solutions to overhaul the modern university.In this one-on-one conversation, Ben and Marc delve into actions that existing institutions can take to improve their current and future situations. This includes exploring new methods for talent recruitment, providing a more individualized education experience for students, and reducing administrative bloat. They also apply an entrepreneurial lens to each university function, revealing startup opportunities poised to emerge – including the building of brand new institutions, nonprofits, and research entities. Enjoy!

Transcript

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0:00.0

universities, you know, historically only were ever built to, you know, train a very small percentage of the 18-year-olds.

0:08.0

How can we have a population that reflects America was kind of the goal as opposed to what's the best product opportunity for students in populations where we're not doing a good job of recruiting.

0:26.9

There's one educational intervention technique that reliably generates better outcomes and in fact

0:31.5

it generates what are called two-segma better outcome.

0:34.0

So it's an intervention that routinely takes kids who was scored the 50th percentile of outcome

0:37.6

and moves into the 99th percentile of outcome.

0:40.2

We probably need to fix the old ones in and build some new ones.

0:43.7

Just giving it how fast the world is involved.

0:46.5

The cost is really much faster than inflation.

0:48.7

And then you can just ask the question, are the results better than they were 20 years ago?

0:56.0

Hello everyone, welcome back to the A16skey podcast. This is your host, Steph Smith.

0:58.6

Now in a recent episode, you got to hear

1:00.9

from our co-founder, Markant Drieson Horowitz as they talked about the crisis in higher education.

1:07.0

Now they did so by breaking down the 12 functions of the modern university going all the way back to when these institutions were founded.

1:14.0

But today you'll get to hear part two of that very conversation

1:18.0

as they focus on the present,

1:20.0

exploring different solutions for overhauling the modern university,

1:23.2

an admittedly difficult task as they get into,

1:26.1

especially given the many stakeholders with varying incentives.

1:29.9

Mark and Ben of course take an entrepreneurial lens to this age-old industry, surfacing opportunities at every step, from recruitment to student experience to the administrative slope.

1:40.0

And if you're interested in hearing part three of this series, an extensive

1:43.4

Q&A on the topic, you can go ahead and check out the Ben and Mark show

...

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