Dale Stephens, a 19-year-old entrepreneur, wants to bring the idea of home-schooling to the college level, with an unusual new Web service he calls UnCollege.
Mr. Stephens is now a freshman at Hendrix College, but not for long. He feels he can learn more outside the traditional college system than as a formal student, and he is leaning toward dropping out at the end of the term and taking his education into his own hands. His new online service is designed to help others do the same.
So far UnCollege is more a concept than a reality, and Mr. Stephens admits that he hasn’t worked out many of the details (the site went up just a few days ago as a kind of trial balloon). But he is tapping into growing frustrations about the high costs of college and the value of a college degree, and the site seems as much a means to spark discussion as a serious educational institution.
Essentially, UnCollege plans to serve as a social group for self-learners to trade tips on how to learn enough through nontraditional means to get the job they’re aiming for. Mr. Stephens has been home-schooled since fifth grade, and he says that has taught him how to find ways to learn outside of classrooms—by finding internships, seeking out mentors, and designing projects on his own. And he says he is frustrated with his experience so far at college, mainly because of what he calls “a gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application of that knowledge.” In other words, he spent his time in class thinking to himself, Why do I need to know this?
“I don’t feel that I’ve learned things that I couldn’t have learned on my own,” he said.
The plan for UnCollege so far is to charge participants $100 per month to gain access to the Web site and a network of mentors that Mr. Stephens is pulling together. Everything will be self-directed—unstudents will decide what “assignments” they should complete and then evaluate how well they think they’ve done. Participants are encouraged to post their projects and self-evaluations online to form their “experience transcript.”
Unstudents also largely decide for themselves when they’ve graduated, though the site does specify that participants should complete “at least 15 projects divided into three learning domains.”
Does Mr. Stephens worry that employers would fail to take seriously the nontraditional transcripts? “It’s true that degrees open doors currently,” he said, adding, “I would like to see that change.”
He allowed that the approach may not work for some fields. “I’m not going to recommend if you want to become a doctor to skip out on medical school,” he said. But for many jobs (he named law among them), students who pass necessary certifications should be able to practice without a formal college degree, he said.
Hillel Levine, a professor of sociology and religion at Boston University, says he was impressed with Mr. Stephens’s energy when he met him after a recent speech the professor gave, though he questions the student’s model. “The problem is real, but I’m not sure he’s come up with the solution” is how Mr. Levine put it. “Experiential things are important,” he said, and he thinks colleges should do a better job of offering real-world opportunities within a structured learning environment. He added, though, that there is a need for people to learn basic skills and gain a liberal-arts education that teaches “how to be a decent person, how to be moral.”
The biggest irony of the student’s project is that it rails against institutional education by setting up a new kind of educational institution. When asked about that, Mr. Stephens admitted that true unstudents could do without his site as well: “Individuals that are motivated to do it themselves definitely don’t need UnCollege.”
39 Responses to Disgruntled College Student Starts ‘UnCollege’ to Challenge System
juris_prudence - February 10, 2011 at 7:27 am
Judging by his comments, I hope that Mr. Stevens will add a project on grammar and English usage to his program. Take, for instance, the last sentence: “Individuals that are motivated to do it themselves definitely don’t need UnCollege.” Sorry, Mr. Stephens, but the second word should be “who” rather than “that,” as in “Individuals who are motivated …”
matthej3 - February 10, 2011 at 7:39 am
Juris Prudence…. this delight you take in pointing out the limitations of students grammar is the very reason that they are pursuing the UnCollege. By their very nature students don’t know… first start respecting the limitation rather than poking fun at it… Go Jeff Young! Go UnCollege! — A University Professor.
tgraham13 - February 10, 2011 at 8:01 am
Mr. Stevens will be well-prepared for un-intellectual pursuits when he graduates. Un-jobs don’t pay well, though (but look at the money he’ll save).
Un-College sounds like the perfect place to become un-educated. Nice gimmick, he’ll get his 15 minutes.
bobtilton - February 10, 2011 at 8:08 am
Why did The Chronicle cover this guy? Has he ever done anything which made him someone whose extremely common idea better than all the other people with iterations of same — including every college with online courses? I don’t know why I read this — especially here!
ptrebian - February 10, 2011 at 8:16 am
Mr. Stephen has a lot of positive energy to fill a gap between traditional degree programs and practical experience. The problem must be fully identified in order to come up with interventions that could help solve some of the issues. Just as Mr. Levine indicated, “there is a need to offer real-world opportunities” inside a degree program that could enrich traditional education experience.
However, Mr. Levine also indicates there are some courses that offer content designed to help students “learn basic skills” and to “gain a liberal-arts education”. This is this important to teach students about behavior and morality. In addition, liberal-arts courses provide a venue to teach critical thought process and provide meaning behind the facts, figures, and syntax important to practical ventures.
What is important is to keep Mr. Stephens’ idea alive, but move in incremental steps. While the problem is defined, keep on working with traditional education institutions. Keep the website alive for students to seek opportunities that fit. One suggestion is to move toward coupling Mr. Stephens’ external venture within traditional education by discussing needs with a university. This could be the beginning of a new model to enhance practical experience with theory.
Perhaps in the future Mr. Stephens’ ideal could become an external certification that enhances a traditional degree.
Paul F Trebian Ed.D.
ptrebian - February 10, 2011 at 8:16 am
Mr. Stephen has a lot of positive energy to fill a gap between traditional degree programs and practical experience. The problem must be fully identified in order to come up with interventions that could help solve some of the issues. Just as Mr. Levine indicated, “there is a need to offer real-world opportunities” inside a degree program that could enrich traditional education experience.
However, Mr. Levine also indicates there are some courses that offer content designed to help students “learn basic skills” and to “gain a liberal-arts education”. This is this important to teach students about behavior and morality. In addition, liberal-arts courses provide a venue to teach critical thought process and provide meaning behind the facts, figures, and syntax important to practical ventures.
What is important is to keep Mr. Stephens’ idea alive, but move in incremental steps. While the problem is defined, keep on working with traditional education institutions. Keep the website alive for students to seek opportunities that fit. One suggestion is to move toward coupling Mr. Stephens’ external venture within traditional education by discussing needs with a university. This could be the beginning of a new model to enhance practical experience with theory.
Perhaps in the future Mr. Stephens’ idea could become an external certification that enhances a traditional degree.
Paul F Trebian Ed.D.
quidditas - February 10, 2011 at 8:34 am
All press aside, there are people–literate people– who get by without degrees.
For example, traders (yes, those traders) traditionally did not have degrees in the days before investment banks started exclusively hiring children of privilege out of the Ivy League.
Of course, when you have Goldman Sachs cycling former employees like Robert Rubin (yes, he has a degree) into the Treasury Department for years on end in hot pursuit of a fed gov backstop to leveraged risk taking and systematic financial fraud, it helps to have aristocrats the government would be loathe to prosecute on board.
Nevertheless, there are still plenty of independent traders who trade without the government safety net extended to the Ivy grads at investment banks. Trader and journalist James Altucher has frequently spoken up about his lack of degree and openly advocates that young people educate themselves.
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/james-altucher's-8-alternatives-to-college-535903.html
I’m not advocating being a trader, but it is interesting to consider this perspective. You know, it was not that long ago that babyboomers could easily land white collar jobs requiring literacy but not necessarily a degree. It is undeniably harder to land corporate employment without a degree today, but in a time when corporations offer little to no job security you really do need to consider whether we should unilaterally submit to that demand.
It is also entirely likely that, absent a change in industrial and trade policy in Washington, more people are going to have to create their own work opportunities. It’s not all clear to me how a traditional college degree, which inculcates student apathy and passivity, is supposed to help people figure out how to do that.
So, kids, improvise as you will. You can always cave to the system later if it’s not working out.
“by his comments, I hope that Mr. Stevens will add a project on grammar and English usage to his program.”
You can also take selected courses that address important issues. Lifelong learning is a better idea anyway.
jffoster - February 10, 2011 at 8:40 am
One of the problems with too much “home schooling” is that it tends to produce people who have trouble working with any institution or organization but their own and think the rules don’t apply to them. While I myself had had all of Hendrix I could take after two years and dropped out, actually transferred to a much bigger university, Hendrix was much tinier 45 years ago than it is now and its programs include a mandatory contact with “the real world”. I suspect this “disgruntled”, actually arrogant, student would have had similar difficulty anywhere and Hendrix may be well rid of him.
But one note about the English language for “juris_prudence” — ‘that’ as a general complementizer, including a general relativizer, has been in English since Old English times. The use of the interrogative WH–words _who_ and _which_ is very unGermanic, unEnglish, and an importation from French which caught on among the upper classes and upwardly mobile wannabes for a few hundred years but never really caught on among ordinary people and the lower classes. Your ‘who’ and not ‘that’ criticism of Mr. Stephens’ complementizer selection is one of those “made up” “rules” of English usage that reflects more how a certain social class and ideology thinks English oughta be spoken rather than how it really is and has little backing from Linguistics.
quidditas - February 10, 2011 at 8:47 am
“He added, though, that there is a need for people to learn basic skills and gain a liberal-arts education that teaches “how to be a decent person, how to be moral.””
Words can hardly express how disgusting the Anmerican university is. I’ve found it to be the best environment in which to investigate how truly appalling people can be. You’re going to have to come up with a new ad campaign.
Even in the day of the American founding, James Madison acknowledged that both religion and education had failed to miraculously regenerate the human character, thus necessitating a representative government that enabled people to defend their interests against the encroachment of others.
I see little evidence in the intervening time that contradicts Madison, despite this country’s OBSESSIVE focus on education as social and economic cure-all. Even worse, Robert Rubin, one of the masterminds of what is arguably the greatest heist in human history, still sits on the Board at Harvard.
Maybe Mr. Levine, who is in Boston, could ring up the Harvard faculty that fired Larry Summers for making politically incorrect comments about womean and science, in order to start a local movement to remove them both permanently–rather than implying that people are morally inferior just because they lack a college degree.
Like I said. Appalling.
12009444 - February 10, 2011 at 9:04 am
If he truly wanted to create a sustainable model, he would be better off working on something similar to the Khan Academy which offers free lectures (the ones I looked at were approachable and well made). Charging $100 per month for access to mentors in this age is unlikely to be sustainable.
I too wonder how good of an employee this individual would make. I have concerns about his knowledge of languages, cultures, and other fields outside of his immediate focus. I’ve already met too many people who have never been outside of their state, who think Thailand and Taiwan refer to the same country, who think Germany has always been whole, french fries is a fine vegetable, etc. As an enterpreneur he MAY do ok but that is a big unknown.
mandosally - February 10, 2011 at 9:38 am
It’s an interesting observation that we’ve so quickly accepted this notion that a college degree is the norm by which we measure one’s level of education. I appreciate my degrees and I did indeed learn a great deal in school, but my grandfather was as wise, well-read, intelligent and successful in life as I’ll ever be. None of my grandparents had the opportunity to go to college. All of their children did; their grandchildren, too. It’s a fairly recent concept, relatively speaking (no pun intended), that a degree is necessary for – or perhaps better put, a sign of – education. And quite frankly, given the Ivy League lot that currently runs our economic system, our insurance system, our health care system and more, the argument that such “education” is necessary to be a decent, moral person is, well, absurd.
wittseek7 - February 10, 2011 at 9:44 am
Even if Mr. Stephens were studying Ancient Greek with an excellent teacher, he’d still be acquiring real-life skills. Not to mention a larger vision, an asset he seems to need to develop.
willardhall - February 10, 2011 at 9:49 am
I’m a BIG fan of self-taught individulas and completely agree that not everyone needs to have a college degree to be a happy, competent, and productive citizen. Indeed, many in college now might be better off pursuing other ways of improving and educating themselves. That said, aside from adapting a 1970s ad campaign from Seven-Up, “The Uncola Nut,” I’m not sure anything this young man has done even begins to merit recognition. In the future, the Un-college may be a viable and important alternative to college, but let it do something — ANYTHING — first.
stevefoerster - February 10, 2011 at 9:56 am
jffoster: ‘One of the problems with too much “home schooling” is that it tends to produce people who have trouble working with any institution or organization but their own and think the rules don’t apply to them.’
Scare quotes? Seriously? Besides, if it’s true that home schooling produces those sorts of independent thinkers then that’s a positive attribute, not a negative one.
quidditas - February 10, 2011 at 10:00 am
“Even if Mr. Stephens were studying Ancient Greek with an excellent teacher, he’d still be acquiring real-life skills. Not to mention a larger vision, an asset he seems to need to develop.”
Okay, but I’m ready to put him up against Mr. Levine’s church lady right now.
vandoesborgh - February 10, 2011 at 10:06 am
I think it is fascinating that in my own family the level of degree is inversely proportionate to the income. The two with Ph.D.s are paid the least, in the middle is the sibling with an MBA then on top are two siblings, one with a Bachelors that he earned while working and another with no degree.
There interesting part is that all but the youngest of us has lost a job this year (he was finishing up his degree).
If I were to take my family as an example I’d say that having a degree doesn’t help you keep a job and a higher degree doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get higher pay.
karlabergen - February 10, 2011 at 10:37 am
What a novel idea….a self-educated individual!
facultydevelopment - February 10, 2011 at 10:48 am
Schools provide only access. They offer access to experts, advanced libraries, and active-learning opportunities. Their degrees improve access to job interviews. Mr. Stephens merely identified that “learning” is not the school’s responsibility and that with advent of the Internet, more people have access to a growing number of educational resources outside of schools. He also draws our attention to a social contradiction: More jobs require degrees now that more people can access educational resources without formal schooling.
Mr. Stephens may not be famous. His UnCollege may not go anywhere. But this topic is definitely worthy of discussion — which should be self-evident from this article’s number of comments. Thanks for writing this!
a_flem - February 10, 2011 at 11:16 am
The only reason he’s “disgruntled” is because he doesn’t have any friends. He’s the most pretentious ass I’ve ever met. He once said in class, when talking about new experience, that he’d never been around “so many people outside of [his]” read, his Parents’, “tax bracket”. The only reason he came to Hendrix was because he wanted to be a big fish in a little pond, but he wasn’t even able to work up the votes to be Freshman senator. He’s kind of a joke around campus actually. The only reason he keeps getting coverage for all his stupid ideas is because his parents have tons of money and connections. Honestly, an airline that only goes from London to New York and back with ticket prices being less than $300? Laughable.
drjeff - February 10, 2011 at 11:30 am
ptrebian – If preening, willful overlooking of the obvious, and obtuseness are “morality,” then our liberal-arts colleges currently do a terrific job of teaching it! Actually acquiring knowledge and skills in English, History, Math or Science? Not so much. Highly relevant article from the NY Times yesterday: http://nyti.ms/i08hkm
elder_elder - February 10, 2011 at 11:47 am
I wonder how many kids (and parents) are ready to cough up $1200 a year to get a non-degree from a non-accredited non-institution that doesn’t provide any guidance or direction. $1200 could buy a lot of books.
Self-directed learning is a noble thing and job-training is an important thing, but they’re usually mutually exclusive. I do not trust a 19-year-old to know what skills or experiences she needs to succeed in a career or in life. One of the great virtues of a traditional liberal education is that it forces students to encounter ideas that that would not otherwise, to reach an objective level of mastery in areas that might seem impractical on the surface. Heaven knows that a healthy percentage of my Shakespeare students every quarter are only there because they have to fulfill a general ed requirement.
And then what happens in my classroom? Of course the students who already love literature and who are interested in Shakespeare do well: they bring their own motivation. But my favorites are the students who come in grudgingly, who hope to skate by quietly in the middle ranks and get back to their major-courses business or pharmacology or engineering or pre-law, those students who read a play and find it boring but then hear something in the classroom that sparks their interest: they discover a spark of interest. She’ll make a few tentative comments in class, and then grow in boldness until she can confidently engage in discussion–on a topic that she imagined would be divorced from her interests.
I love seeing students discover the relevance of literature and of the humanities, of a liberal education even within the walls of a land-grant university. It is not, after all, about teaching students to be decent or moral or even good citizens, but rather to encourage students to discover that through the works of humans in all areas (art, science, politics, commerce, relationships) we can ourselves learn how to live thoughtfully and alertly.
I see it happen over and over in my classroom, every term. Not, alas, with every student, but I live in hope that what happens in my classroom also happens in the other general ed classes all over campus, in those classes that students enter only because they have to, because the damn institution forces them with those “stupid breadth requirements.” I see it happen ever term, but I do not foresee it happening with any consistency with the self-directed learners for whom an UnCollege is directed.
spellettieri - February 10, 2011 at 12:05 pm
I agree that education needs to be reformed and honestly I think I have taught myself more than I’ve learned in any classroom. However the biggest issue that this venture will have is gaining credibility. There is certainly enough technology out there to support groups of distance learners. One tool that I like for this purpose is http://Enterthegroup.com.
I wish Dale a lot of luck, he has big dreams!
drj50 - February 10, 2011 at 12:41 pm
There is great potential in the idea of students taking a much more active role in organizing and planning their learning. In my experience, however, few know enough to do so. I have encountered a large number of self-taught adults in one area of my professional life. Without exception, they know a great deal from a very limited perspective, haven’t a clue about the limitations of that perspective or even of what other perspectives they should consider, and have a level of confidence (arrogance) about what they know that far outstrips their actual knowledge. And these comments are not just grousing from an academic; I have watched them fail to achieve anything beside damaging people and organizations.
After an undergraduate degree and a professional master’s, I didn’t need a lot of help identifying what I needed to read in my doctoral program. I believe many upper-division undergraduates would be better served if we gave them structured opportunities to learn to learn by designing a portion of their own learning experiences. But this story is about education for a much broader set of undergraduates. Even those with more life experience (non-traditional students returning to college) have little clue about what they do not know or why they need to know it. I wish I could believe it will work, but all my experience says that (for at least the vast majority of students) it won’t.
takazee - February 10, 2011 at 1:08 pm
To elder_elder:
Thanks for the wonderful and profound (not to mention persuasive) statement about why liberal education matters. I’m a college president, and I’ll steal without apology the phrase “…we can ourselves learn how to live thoughtfully and alertly” and use it often in my communications with the various constituencies of my university. That really says it all.
quidditas - February 10, 2011 at 1:36 pm
“Without exception, they know a great deal from a very limited perspective, haven’t a clue about the limitations of that perspective or even of what other perspectives they should consider, and have a level of confidence (arrogance) about what they know that far outstrips their actual knowledge.”
The same thing could be said of any specialist, which most formally educated people are these days. And, no, a smattering of liberal arts courses (“perspectivalist” or not) off the cafeteria menu does not alter that condition of general ignorance.
drj50 - February 10, 2011 at 2:57 pm
quidditas: I agree many specialists lack knowledge outside of their field — and sometimes in it. But I usually (apart from some college faculty, sadly) a degree of humility about what they don’t know and a willingness to listen to others that I don’t find in those who are entirely self-taught.
But I also agree that a random collection of “distribution requirements” typically does little to help students. It is another case of asking (intellectually) inexperienced students to synthesize something that they lack the knowledge and skills to put together. That is why I believe we need coherent, gen ed curricula in which multiple courses work together in carefully articulated ways to achieve common goals of critical thinking, communication, etc.
robertwmccarthy - February 10, 2011 at 3:28 pm
This idea sounds about as good as an Airline without pilots or airplanes.
quidditas - February 10, 2011 at 5:28 pm
“That is why I believe we need coherent, gen ed curricula in which multiple courses work together in carefully articulated ways to achieve common goals of critical thinking, communication, etc.”
I agree with that.
tulaikov - February 10, 2011 at 5:32 pm
This self-educating idea misses the main point. It’s not just “learning” in this abstract way. The crucial component of higher education, the key process of growth, more even than the learning, is the chronic evaluation by instructors, by tests, exams, correction of papers and labs, the regular criticism from the outside by someone who has expertise.
A person who is only self-taught can begin to think that s/he is right all the time. Such a person may learn, but they do not have to deal repeatedly and in a way that counts with criticism by someone who knows more, and do not have to revise the paper and do the test again. I do not mean by this to question home-schooling, because in that process there is evaluation.
True learning involves making mistakes, both ones the student recognizes and ones the student does not recognize, and doing the project, lab, paper, test again until s/he gets it right. And therefore it involves learning to handle getting corrected, finding out one made a mistake and having the confidence and inner strength to try again. And another component of that is having other students around who are taking the class, who can help each other and encourage each other and even to some extent teach each other.
In light of these aspects of education, this uncollege idea seems like an escape for students who have not learned how to deal with these kinds of problems. Students who would participate in this might end up significantly worse off in educational and social terms than the vast majority of college students.
snapcase - February 10, 2011 at 6:36 pm
I currently have a student who says he’s going to do “big things” in the field of education and has a lot of energy. Can the Chronicle swing by my institution next week to do an article on him?
22208120 - February 10, 2011 at 7:16 pm
“I don’t feel that I’ve learned things that I couldn’t have learned on my own,” he said.
This is so true!
When people who need knowledge (and not necessarily degrees) realize this basic and obvious fact, they may suddenly realize how they can save themselves tens of thousands of dollars in a relatively short period of time!
hmprescott63 - February 11, 2011 at 7:31 am
[sneeze/rip off!] http://diyubook.com
willismg - February 11, 2011 at 10:46 am
While I am not usually one to pick at people’s grammar, I would say this. The quote in the article that somebody took issue with is not the only example of this person’s rather poor powers of self-expression. I just made a little foray over onto his website. One would think that he would try to make it as correct as possible, but in looking at only two pages I already ran out of fingers on one of my hands counting rather gross distortions of what would be considered proper. Things like subject-verb agreement problems, etc.
This kid should get back to school and take his lumps…
fruupp - February 11, 2011 at 1:24 pm
The author wrote: “I don’t feel that I’ve learned things that I couldn’t have learned on my own,”…
Can Mr. Young spell “hubris”?
samueloulrey - February 11, 2011 at 2:01 pm
I get the impression that, due to personal financial concerns, many people in academia are more focused on the credentials than on the research, teaching and learning. Any genuine new knowledge or learning is just a side-effect to them, beside the point of gathering credentials and jockeying for political power within and among the institutions they recognize.
The continuing existence and proliferation of alternatives will keep them in line, and Stephens’s UnCollege sounds a bit more like what I thought a real university would be like back when I was in HS. When I got to university, I was sorely disappointed to find it was merely HS on steroids, with lots of wizard of Oz illusions to make it seem like more.
I heard the other night on a Brookings discussion carried on C-SPAN that 10% of computer workers do not have a HS diploma, and NSF has said that 44% do not have a CS degree, while some 20% of engineers do not have engineering degrees. These are productive people, some of them leaders in the field.
OTOH, visa and credential mills like “Tri-Valley University” need to be kept in line. Auto-didacts are one thing, but fraud is another.
polargrid - February 11, 2011 at 3:22 pm
“some 20% of engineers do not have engineering degrees. These are productive people, some of them leaders in the field.”
But I’ll bet those 20% of engineers have degrees in a closely related, lab-based scientific field like physics or chemistry, rather than being “self-taught” at home or with a nontechnical degree.
Also, this guy is a rather kooky outlier. The vast majority of undergraduates I’ve taught (in a STEM field) are looking to us — the faculty — to set standards they need to meet, and to provide guidance as to what key concepts and skills are needed for them to be successful in that field. Sure, there are occasional attitude problems and the bravado that goes with insecurity, but I have not yet encountered students claiming that they could design a better science or engineering curriculum, teach it all to themselves without evaluation, and find gainful employment afterwards. I suspect that other students would indeed treat someone like this as a joke.