(2017-03-20) MissionU Says It Can Replace Traditional College With A One-Year Program

MissionU Says It Can Replace Traditional College With a One-Year Program (Alternatives To A College Degree)

A venture-backed company today announced a new educational offering billed as an alternative to the standard undergraduate experience. It will last only one calendar year, feature a curriculum designed in close coordination with well-known employers, and cost nothing—at least at the outset. Students who attend, however, must promise to give up 15 percent of their incomes for three years once they land a job that pays $50,000 or more. The unusual new program is called MissionU, founded by Adam Braun, a 33-year-old entrepreneur best known for his work building schools in developing countries.

“Institutions should be accountable to the outcomes of their students,” says Braun, calling the debt burdens shouldered by many college graduates “a massive, massive societal injustice.”

MissionU won’t build a traditional campus: Teaching will be done online—although classes will be held at set times in virtual classrooms (in other words, synchronously). Students will be admitted to the program in “cohorts” of about 25, and everyone in each cohort will live in the same city or town, so that they can have an opening three-day orientation and monthly in-person meetups.

The first quarter (as in business quarter, not academic quarter) will focus on “foundations,” which Braun describes as “eight hard skills that we think will make you an effective employee in any company.” Among those are Excel spreadsheet software, public speaking, and business writing. The second quarter will be devoted to what he called “discovery,” and will take "students through a deep process of introspection and self-discovery that help them define their sense of purpose and where they want to point their compass in life." The third quarter will involve a “deep dive on your major.” And in the final quarter students will be broken up into small teams and work on real-world problems supplied by a set of partner companies

At the start, MissionU will offer only one major: data analytics and business intelligence. But it expects to add more majors soon, and not all of them will be in technology, says Braun, who says that nursing is one that is being considered.

“In designing our curriculum, we actually start with employers first,” says Braun.

“There is certainly a wonderful place in our society for the liberal arts,” says Braun, who himself graduated from Brown University. “I just don’t think that every single young person should be asked to commit so much of their” money to them, he adds. “The bachelor’s degree as a one-size-fits all no longer works.”

Bryan Alexander is a futurist, consultant, and close watcher of higher education trends. He says he applauds the experimental nature of MissionU. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea, but I’m interested in it,” he says. He did have one firm prediction about it: “Traditional academics are going to hate this with a passion,” he says. “It’s the exact opposite of what they see the undergraduate experience being about.”

Even traditional academics who have been active in teaching innovation for years are among those with concerns about the model. One of those is Gardner Campbell.

Liberal Arts colleges help 18-22 year-olds understand the complexity of the world and find their place in it

“Is this raising up a generation of people who are going to be able to make unique contributions to the benefit of society? I don’t think so,” he says.

A broader concern is whether bad actors could come along and offer terms that end up trapping students in difficult repayment situations, essentially turning them into modern-day indentured servants. That is why some, even those offering such agreements, are calling for regulations to set clear limits on what can be offered to establish trust in the idea.