Role of Startups in Higher Education
Education is like a TREE. It has roots which can be equated to the pre-kindergarten education. Then after the kindergarten for the next 10 years education follows a linear path in many if not all the schools around the world. That can be equated to the trunk of the tree. Then after 10th class in India and some other countries around the world the branches of education start to diverge. Generally in India we have education divided into Arts, Commerce and Science from class 11th.
In college there is a focus on specialisation. Similar to a tree the branches divide and we have lots of small branches at the top. Each branch is a specialisation. We have very specific college degrees with specialisation in topics like nanotechnology or animation these days. In medical stream we have lots of specialised branches. We generally have bachelor’s degrees followed by master’s degree and doctorate at the end of the education tree. The more you study the more you specialise.
The specialisations help a person to focus on a particular area and gain expertise. New specialisations are constantly arising. The problem however these days is that the speed of change in the world is so great that no matter what you study something new crops up from another area and changes the best practices in your domain. Specially the changes due to technology and globalisation have made it essential to understand various areas all at once. Most colleges in countries like India are ill suited for imparting multi-disciplinary knowledge.
An example can be the creation of a mobile application. To create a mobile application you need knowledge of all 3 — art, science and commerce. You need to understand the customer. You need to understand the pain points of the customer. You need knowledge of design to create a good user experience. You need knowledge of commerce to sell it. You need technical knowledge to make it. It is difficult for any one person to have all these forms of knowledge therefore all big technology companies have a cross functional team with product manager, designers and programmers. The problem is that all 3 roles need knowledge about the domains of each other. All 3 roles need multi-disciplinary knowledge.
Universities like Stanford allow a person to create his or her personalised course. We have americans at the forefront of digital products precisely due to this ability. Steve Jobs had attended a calligraphy course due to which he was able to put fonts into Apple’s computers. This led Apple to become famous within the designer community.
In countries like India this is generally not possible. Once you choose arts you cannot learn about engineering and once you choose engineering you generally find it difficult to learn design at the same time.
I wanted to do chartered accountancy and computer engineering at the same time. Unfortunately it was not possible. My father was a chartered accountant who died in a road accident when I was in class 10th. Thus my mother wanted me to become a chartered accountant to take over his once thriving practice. I wanted to become a software engineer. The education system policies were against doing both at the same time. Generally both are considered difficult. So a person pursuing both would be unthinkable. However I used to study chartered accountancy for 2–3 months a year and for rest of the time I self studied computer science. I have trained hundreds of engineers in top corporates on Java (Micro Edition) and HTML 5 and I know multiple computer languages. I am also a qualified Chartered Accountant. I also wrote India’s first book on mobile application development in 2003. Thus although the system did not allow me I was able to pursue both streams parallely.
Another big problem with higher education is the cost of education. Generally in USA it costs more than USD 100,000 for a good college degree. Even in countries like India the cost of higher education can be in tens of thousands of dollars which is way more than what most Indians can afford. The cost of a college degree is more than the cost of opening a small business. That’s very high!
A third problem in countries like India is that some universities are very slow to update their curriculum. I once heard about a famous open university in India asking about Windows 95 in 2010 exams!
All these problems can be solved to a certain by converting higher education degree to a startup. It costed me less to open a technology startup than it costs people to earn an engineering degree. We can have startups as the core engine of many of the higher education programs. Specially degrees in computer science, electronics and MBA are highly suited for learning while being an entrepreneur or intrapreneur. When I am talking of startup I am referring to a student opening a startup or a student working at a startup company in a role where he or she has freedom to create a product. Many small startups including mine readily want to offer such roles to interested students.
The rate of learning is far higher when a person is running a startup than when he or she is learning for formal exams. The flexibility and relevancy is also more. We used to have education before jobs because a person could not be handed over precious resources of a company before any form of formal training. These days companies want entrepreneurial people. Some companies give special preference to failed entrepreneurs in recruitment. The cost of being a technology entrepreneur is way less than the cost of a good college degree these days. So the problem of mishandling of precious resources does not arise.
Also with the advent of YouTube, open courses from prestigious universities and online education companies like Coursera and Udacity the need for a formal classroom lecture has diminished. The need for alumni and mentoring is still there but even here networks like The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and meetup groups come to help.
Thus overall the startups provide better conditions for learning and growth while at the same time they are sometimes cheaper than university fees. Also we have role models like Bill Gates who left prestigious universities to found startups.
In fact open universities and even established universities should start programs where the student can just start a startup and come to university only for help and guidance. That way the university can accommodate more students and reduce the fees. The universities can provide mentoring, support and alumni network while the student can remain free to learn according to needs of the product and market of his or her choosing instead of a rigid curriculum. The degree could be awarded based on validated learning a student makes in his startup.
Eric Ries the author of famous book Lean Startup refers to validated learning as learning which a startup makes based on experiments to confirm a hypothesis. This way all degrees can become entrepreneurial.
My experience tells that even though these kinds of programs may not be helpful to all students the most entrepreneurial students will find such programs very valuable. The most entrepreneurial students are students which have the highest potential to rise in future. The countries of the world need such students for creating future jobs.
Students who are low in entrepreneurial energy can continue in the expensive traditional programs offered by universities. They can go into lots of linear or static jobs we still have in the job market. Although with the advent of Artificial Intelligence and automation the need for such jobs will evaporate in years to come.
We have started Paytm - Build for India initiative as an experiment in this direction. Please visit https://www.meetup.com/Paytm-Build-for-India/ to join it.
