Episode 995 Scott Adams: Psssst. I Think We Won The War. Take a Look at the GoldenAge of Education

Date: 2020-05-25 | Duration: 16:32

Topics

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Whiteboard1: Future of Education Whiteboard2: Life Strategy Major Scott Galloway and a new way of thinking about education

If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.

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## Transcript

[0:10]

bum-bum-bum-bum-bum hey everybody as we bring the curtain down on another day in the era of coronavirus I have nothing but good news for you today Utz
Utz that's good news wait too much light let's get rid of some of that hold on oh
yeah that's way better so I take it that's my solemn responsibility to make you all happier
we don't have Snickers in the chair boo on the ground boo say hi to the audience not interested okay fine fine fine well apparently she wants to be on camera here so you'll be seeing her do a walk-by there we go

[1:11]

seeing her do a walk-by there we go here's what I wanted to tell you tonight I feel like we want and I'm talking about the virus have you been watching the pictures of people going out and just having a good time outside it feels like we won and here's what I mean in two weeks if our hospitals are not crashed no we won meaning that nothing's going to stop us from reopening because if what we did this weekend doesn't cause a massive spike that crashes our hospitals I mean it might it might cause a little spike in some places but if it doesn't crash the hospitals we're back or are back and I don't want to get ahead of it because of course there there will still be lots of people dying there's plenty of

[2:13]

of people dying there's plenty of tragedies lots of work a lot of people been financially devastated and there's gonna be a lot to do to clean this mess up but it's starting to look like 2021 this is gonna be like the best year of all time and some of the things that are going to happen or directly because of the corona there are things that it shook up that just needed to be shook up for example I would be amazed if a healthcare costs don't plummet now that we can have doctors and telehealth across the state lines I mean that little bit of change probably is going to open up competition like crazy so healthcare will clearly change to a more digital model I don't think there's any any way that we're going to go back to full commuting so traffic might become less of a problem people will be spending less to commute so that'll be less of an expense quality

[3:13]

so that'll be less of an expense quality of life will go up I honestly think also that the lifestyle changes that people took just to boost their immune system I asked that this morning turns out almost everyone of you did something to boost your immunity there's no way that doesn't pay dividends because a lot of this becomes habit over time so we'll be healthier will probably pay less for it will be driving less we'll be less stressed about all that and the home delivery business will be better than ever stock mark is looking strong and weirdly even property values didn't seem to change too much so I want to tell you one specific piece of good news that I see coming which is the future of education and a few people asked me to map out what I think is gonna happen and because of the coronavirus and everybody rethinking the whole idea of do I need to be on campus do I need to be in a

[4:14]

to be on campus do I need to be in a classroom is there a better way and here's where I think it needs to go now will it go this way I would say the biggest wildcard and I'll tell you what I'm talking about a minute but the biggest wildcard is probably the big tech companies because if they decide to try to control education the way let's say Apple tries to control iTunes with that sort of thing if it becomes a sort of walled off and somebody's product well might not be so cheap in the future but in a perfect world it'd be more open and competitive I saw an interview with Scott Galloway professor Galloway who wrote this book the four and he's a really good interview if you get if you get a chance to Google it Google Scott Galloway and Anderson Cooper he did his interview on CNN and it was excellent he's really good TV but he also had some good thoughts so you tell you the

[5:14]

good thoughts so you tell you the thought that I thought was really insightful it goes like this the big tech companies are so large they're for somebody like Apple or Google to have a let's say a 10% growth they would have to eat entire industries they can't just launch a new product and grow 10% because they're already so big they need to devour industries but not every industry is right for devouring some of them have low margins some of them they're already in and lots of people are in like healthcare and what Scott pointed out is that education is a super high margin business and when I thought about that I thought well that can't be right because colleges don't make that much money right there always fund raising they're barely making ends meet is in college sort of the opposite of a high margin business and then this little thing clicked in my brain which was oh not if you do it the old way if

[6:15]

was oh not if you do it the old way if you do it the new way digitally you could drive out what 98% of the cost think of another industry where you could take out 98% of the cost now I don't know if that's possible but I would say easily 90% because you're gonna get rid of some room and board and you know the classrooms and the you know most of the professor is the administration I think 90% so if you've got an enormous industry the education industry it's also a mess I mean there's nobody who thinks it's good the way it is right so it's a mess it's enormous there are only a few big there are big opportunities that have high margins to disrupt and that the tech companies are going to come for it as I was Scott Gollum Galloway's gallo Scott Galloway insight is that there's no way they're gonna be able to stay away from it it's too big and it's too juicy and especially now that everything got

[7:18]

especially now that everything got disrupted the way we're thinking about College has changed and that's probably the key because until people started really thinking about it differently it was just too easy to do it the old way let's do it the way we did it before so let me tell you and and once the big companies get in here and the innovation starts it's gonna happen really fast and then we're gonna be on the way to the golden age let me tell you what I think it should look like in the perfect world if I could design the future of it it would look like this the first thing you would need is I would start with some kind of a a comprehensive major a college major they would teach you all the things that are useful and none of the things that are not if you take a regular college and major today you're gonna get some useful stuff but you can't get a lot of stuff there's not that useful why not have a college major that's just a uniform major for the

[8:20]

that's just a uniform major for the digital world that's let's call it life strategy and it's only the good stuff they would teach you persuasion selling you would teach you a little bit about money you know managing money so you can understand that world and it would teach you to write to communicate to speak basically all the stuff that makes anybody successful including the strategy of how to succeed how to build systems that of goals how to increase your talent stack so those are the types of classes and now the what I'm adding to this is the idea that they would be broken into chunks and each of these chunks would be like a marketable product just like a book would be on Amazon so that anybody could produce any of these chunks and just to the marketplace and if these if these boxes from left to right represent the entire course then each of these chunks could be classes they could be parts within a class within a topic but they

[9:22]

within a class within a topic but they would have to be defined by somebody so that anybody who's making content would know that this is exactly the content for this box no more no less so everybody is it's apples and apples once you have apples to apples and all the courses are are kind of lined up and and let's say a federal body or just somebody credible has created this this degree then let's say the federal government blesses it and says yes we can certify that if you finish these classes you get the degree in life strategy major now if you need a skill on top of that and it's now something like lawyer engineer or doctor you know very specific stuff your big companies will teach you the extra skills but they want to know that they've got a good base and that's what the life strategy major would give you you still need more on top of that but that gets you started now once you've got a competitive market where anybody can have a best-seller

[10:24]

where anybody can have a best-seller there are a number of things you want to make sure that you're accomplishing so that this is a good robust market number one each of these things should have no introductions when you click on it it should be a lesson not let me tell you about how I became a teacher not giving you the history of people who have given classes and tell you why they used to be bad but now they're gonna just start teaching and that even within the chunks there should be some easy indexed cliques so that you could find the places within the chunks easily identified boom go right to it next you need to be able to track performance you want to be able to keep track of students you so you know which of the classes they took on their journey and then you could measure how they did on tests so that you would be able to say oh this whoever took this class almost always did better on so that would get a higher ranking maybe

[11:25]

so that would get a higher ranking maybe they could charge more in the future of course eventually there will be augmented reality and virtual reality this is you know it's guaranteed because what would be a better way to teach history for example than putting you in the middle of it having you actually there in some historical event you wouldn't forget that because your visual creature if they plop you right in the middle of history you're gonna remember history you were there you remember your own life when you're there it will feel it'll be just like that now imagine teaching somebody to be a mechanic of some type or anything that you work with your hands now nobody needs parts nobody needs a an engine to work on nobody needs a physical thing you could just manipulate them in the virtual virtual reality world until you learn them and of course that assumes it to be sort of Hollywood models for these these chunks these classes there will be teams of people just like a Hollywood

[12:25]

teams of people just like a Hollywood film would bring a team of people together you would have bestsellers you'd have reviews of course you know which ones are the good ones yeah now here's the interesting part these chunks these classes could live anywhere so one of them might be on the who to me one might be uncon one might be on your website that you made all by yourself one might be on YouTube so as long as you've got pointers to them it doesn't matter where they live and if you wanted what are the good one let's say well maybe you need a subscription to you know who Demi or one of the other online sites you might need not need to take every one of their classes but because that one class is so highly rated and that's a chunk you want well you don't have to pay the premium you could get the less expensive version but if you want you might have to go to unit you did me or someplace else and sign up together but we're not talking big money we're still talking in the range of you know a hundred dollars a month to get a

[13:26]

know a hundred dollars a month to get a college education and of course you need to solve for testing and grading of papers and such I'm pretty sure that you could find a way to distribute all that maybe you can have somebody who actually watches people take a test digitally it'd be easy to achieve unless somebody's in the room but between facial recognition monitoring what's on your keyboard checking to see if you stole your paper from some other document because it's pretty easy to check now if you plagiarize and and some kind of monitoring while you're taking a test might be enough I don't know the exact system that would work but you would have to solve for testing I think we could do it and grading and then I can imagine an app that would let people who were on the same path get together locally in little pods let's say a dozen people doesn't matter what the number is but let's say a dozen people they just look at their app and they say yeah I want to take chunk number three of this class see

[14:28]

chunk number three of this class see who's taking it looks like there's somebody a few miles away they're gonna have a watchin party I'll go me some people who are doing the same thing I'm doing get my networking and what's the worst thing about not going to a physical college you don't meet anybody so with this model you're still watching it on a screen but you have the option of a meet up with a dozen other people who are watching it at the same time and you can talk about it and help each other and network so you meet people so this is how I see the future it's got to be broken up into little competitive chunks and once this happens anybody can learn anything and then you're going to start then you're going to start unlocking the potential of the people who had been underserved because think about how many people in this in this country have not had the benefit of the right kind of education and are not going to get it partly because of finance partly because they don't know

[15:28]

finance partly because they don't know how it's hard they can't find it they'd have to travel there's just a lot there's a lot going on in getting a college education not everybody can do it
it but everybody with a phone and a TV can kind of do this so that that is the suggestion I want you to I'm gonna end on this because I want you to just have a a positive thought about the future education is going to change and it's going to change quickly I think Scott Galloway is exactly right about that and I think the big companies are going to make a huge impact really soon somebody says mentors are important and I would agree and it's easy to imagine that you could work that into this system so you would have tutors and mentors would be associated with each chunk of information all right that's it for today somebody's asking about Snickers she's doing pretty well thanks for asking and I will talk to you

[16:29]

for asking and I will talk to you tomorrow