The Education Problem: Raj Reddy (Part 6)

How do you take a new educational model, fund it and successfully convince students to enroll in your school? Raj answers all of these questions in this segment.

SM: What is the model of Gurukulam? Is it foundational support? How are you financing the project? RR: The financing is very interesting; it is what we call a money back guarantee loan. Banks in India will give you educational loans. What we are saying is, after you complete your program (and you won’t complete it until you get 95%) that if you don’t get a good enough job, you do not have to pay your money back.

SM: Are you providing the loans? RR: The bank is providing the loan, we are providing the guarantee. >>>

The Education Problem: Raj Reddy (Part 5)

The new educational model proposed by Raj is based on capability and performance, and negates the advantages that some students have in terms of better access to quality schools and a better support system at home.

SM: Children raised in cities have an advantage as well becuase they have environmental nurturing which the village kid does not have. RR: Exactly, and the net result of this is that we are leaving kids behind in India, and even in the USA. I would say 80% of the children in India and maybe 20% of the people in the US are being left behind. >>>

The Education Problem: Raj Reddy (Part 4)

Raj explains his theory of the “local best”, as well as how he identifies these students for admission into his school’s masters program.

SM: You are also saying the book or lecture based education is not the way to go. RR: That is what I am saying. If this person is just putting the same kind of content as lectures, then he and I are miles apart.

SM: My conclusion is that a knowledge base can make a big difference in education, it can fill the hole that exists and become the standard for education. Take algebra for example. It is the same material – it’s not like we are re-inventing algebra. It should be taught the same way using a single “best practice” format. RR: Yes. A lot of the people in this country also provide content online, content on CD’s, and so on. There is a company that sells a lot of CD’s and makes money doing so called The Teaching Company. They have a large number of very nice lectures. They take the very best teachers from around the country, pay them some money, and record their lectures.

That is also a school in the box, but that is not what I am talking about. What I want to do is something where the people learn by doing, not by being lectured at. There are many experts in education so you will probably find a million different proposals. It just so happens that I have one and I am trying to make it happen, and it is happening fortunately, but it is not enough. I think the proposal I have is scalable in interesting ways, and if it happens it will have very interesting consequences. >>>

The Education Problem: Raj Reddy (Part 2)

Essential to Raj’s vision is the creation of a knowledge base, which requires a substantial amount of time and funding to develop. Here we learn one manner in which this can be accomplished.

SM: Before you move on let me ask you, purely from a systems building and systems scalability point of view, if you’re talking about a learning by doing exercise, are you then talking about some sort of a knowledge base that has different problems and the different questions to facilitate the students’ learning? Is that the kind of vision you are thinking about? RR: Exactly, the knowledge base in Simon’s case was a piece of paper. I have a stack of 3,000 papers and they are published in Chinese. I am trying to get my colleagues in China to translate them, and not just translate them but put them online so it becomes a sort of knowledge base, at least an information base. >>>

The Education Problem: Raj Reddy (Part 1)

Recently I talked with Raj Reddy (wiki bio here) about his thoughts in applying technology to education. To begin this series we review the theoretical foundation for his current work.

SM: Raj, I am really looking forward to having a discussion on what I would call strategy and policy in terms of broader use of technology to solve some of the open problems of humanity today, and you are one of the people who has thought endlessly about this over an incredible career. So, tell us, what are some of the nuggets of your thinking, particularly on education.

RR: There are many aspects of education that we need to think about, a lot that has been studied … millions of reports. One thing, about 20 years ago, that struck me dramatically, is an experiment that one of my senior colleagues, Herbert Simon did. He is not only a Nobel Prize winner (in economics), but he is one of the founders of artificial intelligence. He did an interesting experiment. >>>

Serial Entrepreneur: HP Michelet (Part 7)

We continue to explore the foundations of HP’s involvement in ERI. The company came close to going out of business many times in the last 13 years. Somehow, however, the guys who were writing the checks – including HP himself, kept writing those checks! >>>

Serial Entrepreneur: HP Michelet (Part 6)

Over the last five parts, I interviewed HP to extract the full significance of his innovation. After all, Reverse Osmosis and Osmotic Power are not exactly my own core competency areas, so I needed him to walk us through the market landscape, the ROI factors, and the general business eco-system dynamics.

As I did that, however,it made me very curious about the man himself. I knew that HP had built up a Norwegian investment bank before he got involved with ERI. And even before that, as HP told me laughingly over breakfast one day, “he was born with a silver spoon.” In reality, HP is from an old entrepreneurial family in Norway, and the value system he was raised with, most certainly had to do with, one, entrepreneurship, and two, how to harness science and technology into commercially successful endeavors.

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Serial Entrepreneur: Philippe Courtot (Part 11)

My interview with Philippe concludes with final discussions about Qualys, as well as his parting views on the extended enterprise. Also, all ye entrepreneurs in India and China, listen up, he has ideas for you too! >>>