Student debt is nearing a record $1 trillion in the U.S. Jobless law school grads are suing their alma maters for false advertising. Needless to say, the cost of higher education -- not to mention the return on the investment -- has become a sore spot for many.
With an election on the horizon, the Obama Administration has not been deaf to the grumbling. The president addressed the topic in his State of the Union, and his administration has since launched a campaign to stem the rise in college tuition by tying a school's federal aid prospects to its affordability. Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Senator John Kerry were dispatched to university campuses earlier this week to tout the plan. In all the tut-tut over college affordability, there been some nostalgia for the time when some world-class, public universities -- The City University of New York and The University of California, for example -- didn't charge any tuition for many of its students.
Salman Khan's Khan Academy -- a free, nonprofit education site with more than 2,800 video lessons and financial backing from the likes of Google (GOOG) and the Gates Foundation -- has picked up this mantle, at least in spirit. Fortune caught up with Khan a few months ago while he was just about to speak at the Future of State Universities Conference in Dallas. Here is an edited transcript of the conversation.
Fortune: Judging from the counter on your site, it looks like Khan Academy is not too far away from delivering its 120-millionth lesson. What has surprised you the most about all those users?
Sal Khan: I've been surprised at how motivated a lot of people are that you wouldn't traditionally think would be that kind of a motivated student. They were the kid who failed out of college, failed out of high school, hated academics.
I gave a talk last week to a bunch of chief learning officers from companies and one woman came by and said, "My husband hated school. He's dyslexic. He was a fireman and he just started watching the videos and he got really into it. He got really into math, really into physics. Went back to college, got a math degree and a physics degree, a master's in physics, and is now teaching physics."
And so, it's this reality that there are people like that out there that have completely gotten frustrated and disengaged with the traditional model that tends to judge you and label you in very early stages and really doesn't let you learn at your own pace.
What would you say are the limitations of what you are offering at Khan Academy?
The main limitation is we're not granting people formal credentials. We get a lot of letters from people, they're not going to class anymore. And they're just showing up to take an exam to get a credential. And we all know that happens. We did a little bit of that ourselves in college.
At the end of the day, the most that we can do is teach and learn. We can give someone rewards and badges to make them feel good, but they can't put that on their resumes just yet.
Speaking of resumes and credentials, it seems like more people are getting degrees, but they say less and less about how well someone will perform on the job. What's your take?
It's a bit of a statement on the existing system that us or Google or Facebook have to have such a rigorous interview process because we really don't know what a 4.0 in computer science means any more. I think the conversation has to go beyond getting more people to major in electrical engineering or computer science. The conversation is how do we equip people so that they can actually perform well in that type of environment?
