Khan Academy founder Sal Khan is launching an elite degree program backed by Google and Microsoft, priced below $10,000. It aims to disrupt traditional higher education by offering affordable, high-quality, industry-relevant learning.
Khan said the new institute will close the gap between higher education and the skills needed to succeed in the workforce by building its courses in partnership with major employers such as Google, Microsoft, Accenture, Bain, and McKinsey.
Khan Academy founder and CEO Sal Khan is teaming up with Google, Microsoft and McKinsey to offer students a new option for higher education. Khan announced this week that he is launching the Khan TED Institute, a new joint venture with TED and testing giant ETS. The idea is to offer an affordable, AI-focused degree that can compete with elite schools like Harvard and Stanford.
“We think there are many good reasons to go to a traditional university, but not everyone has access to those opportunities,” Khan said in a video announcing the program. “On top of that, the world is changing very, very, very fast. We want to make sure that there are ways even for people with traditional degrees to continue to reskill.”
The curriculum is still under development, but Khan said it will be guided by corporate partners, including Google, Microsoft, Accenture, Bain, McKinsey, and Replit. These are “corporations that I think a lot of people aspire to work at,” he said, “and they’re on the cutting edge of how work is evolving.”
Khan expects to launch the Khan TED Institute within the next 1 to 2 years and plans to seek accreditation as a full-degree program. He aims to have a degree cost less than $10,000 total, just a sliver of what students pay at top-tier universities, where tuition alone is headed toward over $68,000 per year at Stanford and nearly $65,000 per year at Harvard.
The Khan TED Institute’s first degree offering will be a Bachelor’s in Applied AI, with the offerings set to expand over time, according to Fortune. The coursework will be online and asynchronous, so students can set their own schedules. The program targets students from all backgrounds, whether they are recent high school graduates or mid-career professionals.
“We think there are a lot of folks with existing degrees who want to reskill, who want to make sure their skills are relevant in an AI age,” Khan said in the video. “So there might be something like a second Bachelor’s program, with opportunity for transferring a significant number of credits if you already have a Bachelor’s.”
Graduates of Khan TED Institute will have transcripts filled not with gen-ed requirements but with evaluations of technical skills and “what now people are calling durable skills: your communication, your persuasion, your creativity, your resilience,” Khan said.
For many young people, college is starting to feel like a shaky investment. Today, more than 42 million Americans carry federal student loans, and the average borrower owes nearly $40,000.
At the same time, new grads are finding it harder to land solid roles. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate of recent college graduates is 5.6%. Meanwhile, 42.5% of recent college graduates are working in jobs that don’t require college degrees.
Khan said the program could also appeal to those already in college who want to pursue a second degree relevant to their careers. According to Khan, the “competency-based” program bases the degree on the skills students can prove they’ve mastered, not on how many hours they spend in class. Khan said: “So a competency-based pathway like what we’re offering could be very interesting.”
“Even before generative AI, they’ve all been interested in broadening their pipelines, and they even know their existing pipelines are imperfect,” he said. “Even if you’re summa cum laude at a top university, some still might not be strong at collaboration or giving and taking feedback.”
While he acknowledges that the initial cohort of students will be taking a leap of faith on a new institution, “this is going to be a really powerful way for people with traditional backgrounds to really hone their skills of the future,” Khan said.
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Khan Academy is a free digital learning platform that focuses on accessible, “mastery-based” education in subjects that include kindergarten math, AP calculus, LSAT prep, and financial literacy. In 2014, Khan founded the Khan Lab School, an independent TK-12 school near Khan Academy’s headquarters in Mountain View.
“This really could make a positive dent in what the world needs,” Khan said in the video. “We can create a world where more people really do have access to their potential and access to opportunity.”