The Four

remind myself we (NYU) are charging kids $500/minute for me and a
projector. This. Is. Fucking. Ridiculous.
A degree from a good school is the ticket to a better life, and this
ticket is given almost exclusively to exceptional kids from low- and
middle-income U.S. households, and any kid from a wealthy U.S. or
foreign household. Eighty-eight percent of kids from U.S. households
in the top-income quintile will attend college, and only 8 percent from
the lowest. We’re leaving the unremarkable and unwealthy—most
people—behind in a civilization that is now more Hunger Games than
civil.
Apple could change this. With a brand rooted in education, and a
cash hoard to purchase Khan Academy’s digital framework as well as
physical campuses (the future of education will be a mix of off- and
online), Apple could break the cartel that masquerades as a social good
but is really a caste system. The focus should be creativity—design,
humanities, art, journalism, liberal arts. As the world rushes to STEM,
the future belongs to the creative class, who can envision form,
function, and people as something more—beautiful and inspiring—
with technology as the enabler.
A key component would be flipping the business model in
education, eliminating tuition, and charging recruiters, as students are
broke, and the firms recruiting them are flush. Harvard could foster
the same disruption if they take their $37B endowment, cancel tuition,
and quintuple the size of their class—they can afford to do this.
However, they suffer from the same sickness all of us academics are
infected with: the pursuit of prestige over social good. We at NYU brag
how it’s become near impossible to gain admission to our school. This,
in my view, is like a homeless shelter taking pride in how many people
it turns away.
Apple has the cash, brand, skills, and market opening to really
dent the universe. Or... they could just make a better screen for their
next phone.