Our system of education, like most everything else about modern society, developed as a result of the Industrial Revolution that occurred about 250 years ago in Europe. Early grade schools taught “reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic.” There was also a strong emphasis on religious education. And colleges, a couple of hundred years ago, were also quite different. In fact, three of our eight Ivy League universities (Harvard, Princeton, and Yale) began as seminaries for training clergy.
During the 19th century, the demand for colleges began to expand. The emphasis was on the liberal arts, meaning literature, philosophy, music, art history, and so forth. Specializations emerged to meet the nation’s need for people with professional degrees, like physicians, dentists, and lawyers. With the exception of certain trade schools, all of this education took place in classrooms, with tests and the awarding of grades. For perhaps 150 years or more, this was the expected and accepted pattern of American education.
Challenging tradition
Today, and certainly in the very near future, much of aforementioned may change. Given the nature of the new workforce, the classroom, especially the college classroom, may not be the best place for all people to prepare for entry into the marketplace. That theory will be tested at the start of our next academic year, at least for a few exceptional students.
Of course, as a retired educator who taught college for 36 years, I have a bias. Some people who have already demonstrated superior learning by the end of high school might benefit from some alternate form of “higher education.” For the vast majority of students, college continues the process of socialization as our brains continue to develop into our mid-twenties. College also introduces new concepts and methods of analysis. It paves the way for life-long learning which has become increasingly important as the pace of change continues to accelerate. Therefore, one of my other biases is that public colleges should be open to all qualified applicants.
But all that being said, Kevin Haynes who writes for Inc., informs us, “One of Silicon Valley’s biggest venture capital firms is betting $35 million that the next generation of tech entrepreneurs may be better off skipping college to start their own companies instead.”
Horowitz Andreessen Academy
Andreessen Horowitz, more familiarly known as a16z, is a privately-held venture capital firm that has its headquarters in Menlo Park. As of 2026, it manages more than $100 billion in assets. In late September, it announced that it is providing the financial backing for Horowitz Andreessen Academy. The academy, located in San Francisco, will eventually be a for-profit educational organization. However, the first class to be admitted will pay no tuition or fees. But they will be responsible for their own housing and transportation expenses. H-A Academy plans to welcome its first class of about 50 students in September, 2027, according to Haynes.
Along with its founding partners, a16z raised a total of $42 million to kick-start the enterprise. Its partners include Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit, and Stripe. According to Haynes, “They will provide resources, help develop courses, and potentially give students opportunities to work with their teams.” While getting actual experience inside some of these high-tech companies, students will also take some coursework, like “AI Research and Models” and “The Geometry of Luck.”
Haynes writes that there will be no tests, homework, or grades, but students will spend most of their time “developing startup ideas and working on independent projects.” The academy will provide more than 200 mentors and guest speakers, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, to lend their expertise to the students.
Gagan Biyani, CEO of the academy, is cited by Haynes as saying, “The big difference between going to the academy and going to college is we are not gonna prioritize your grades. We’re gonna prioritize proof of work.”
Preparing for the future
Ben Horowitz is quoted as saying, “The training that worked for the Industrial Revolution isn’t going to map perfectly onto the AI revolution, so somebody has to pioneer how you train a person for this new world.” The ultimate goal of the academy is “to help students learn to build, which is the most important skill in the AI era.” In that regard, students will have their own projects to pursue. But they’ll get plenty of help. All students will receive “more than $50,000 in computing credits and a $5,000 travel and research budget….”
This is education by doing, not by sitting and taking notes. Frankly, it reminds me more of graduate school as opposed to the first four years of college. In graduate school, students more or less lead the classes, and the professor in present to help with presentations and to make suggestions about student research. Again, it’s really education by doing, but it’s in a classroom and it does involve the assignment of grades.
The H-A Academy is not accredited, as are colleges. Consequently, students don’t leave with transferable credits or degrees. But Haynes makes an important concluding remark. He says that students “could walk away with something even more valuable: an inside track to Silicon Valley.”
Beginning in September, 2028, the academy will no longer be free. Biyani said that tuition will be similar in cost to an elite private university. And this is where my third bias comes into play. The students who can afford the tuition of an elite private university are generally the sons and daughters of America’s wealthiest families. So, while H-A Academy may well be “educating for the future,’ it may also be the formula for perpetuating an oligarchy that already dominates the U.S. economy. Giving a handful of students from the wealthiest families an “inside track” to important positions in our rapidly-developing high-tech economy seems to be antithetical to the ideal of an open-market capitalist system. And it smacks of elitism. But, if this experiment is successful, my hope is that publicly-funded similar post-secondary institutions of education will become available to all students, based on merit.
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Jim Glynn is Professor Emeritus of Sociology. He may be contacted at j_glynn@att.net.