How would you pull that off?
????Right now, the priority in a four-year institution is to learn things for exams and in your spare time and your summers you might be able to do an internship. I actually think that should be flipped around. I think the focus should be doing internships. An internship 30 years ago was working the mailroom. An internship today at Google is optimizing an algorithm that researchers at universities don't even have access to. I would say the interns that we had this past summer were doing far more rigorous theory than they would do in their coursework. So when I say internship, it's not getting coffee for the boss or stocking mail.
????Many universities, especially public ones, are dealing with painful cuts in government funding and bracing for the possibility of more to come. How do you think that affects what you are trying to do at Khan Academy?
????I'd like to see a reality where if someone wants to work when they turn 18 to help support their family and they learn at their own pace on something like the Khan Academy or other things, that they can just on their own get a bunch of the credits they need just by testing out of things. And maybe they have to show up on campus for a semester of labs or something. You're getting a person like that to the end point that they need to get to, in a way that's actually good for everybody.
????Then again, so many people land jobs in a way that has very little to do with academic merit. It has to do with the people that they meet while they were at school.
????I agree with that. I think the strongest argument there is business school. I think the one thing business school does very well is that they kind of understand that that's what they are about. But I think society has recognized that business school is an optional thing. What you are describing is a powerful tool, just as going to a fancy prep school -- going to Andover or Exeter -- is great. But that's not something that we necessarily have to say everyone has to have access to….
Is the idea to keep Khan Academy free going forward?
????Yes. It is core to our mission in that the learning part of Khan Academy will always be free. The incremental cost for us to teach an incremental student is zero or close to zero. So it's our mission that we shouldn't put a gate there.
????When I thought about the two home run outcomes as a for-profit or as a not-for-profit, as a for-profit, a home run outcome for Khan Academy is we reach a bunch of users, we capture a bunch of revenue, maybe we get acquired or we have some type of an exit, an IPO, and Sal will be rich. That's not bad, not a bad thing. But the home run as a not-for-profit institution is just maybe we can be this new breed of institution that is kind of like a Stanford or MIT, but the brand isn't built purely on its selectivity. The brand is based on its quality of what it's delivering and it can reach millions, or maybe one day billions, of students and maybe be around for hundreds of years.
