Fix the Curriculum, Break the Signal?
A guest post
Bet On It reader Kris sent me this thought-provoking email. Reprinted with his permission. Please share your thoughts!
It has come to my attention recently that Jordan Peterson launched his ’Peterson Academy’ as a potential alternative to ’corrupted’ mainstream universities. I saw him on Joe Rogan podcast promoting this project, talking about the absolute freedom given to invited lecturers, high quality of the material etc. They also film lectures with a green screen behind speakers and then employ AI tools to add relevant graphics and charts in the background which sounds cool and innovative. Supposedly they have also solved the problem of cheating in online exams. All sounds great.
During the interview, Rogan asked Peterson about accreditation. JBP answered that plan A is to try to get it. But if it turns out that in order to become an accredited university they need to give up too much freedom and obey intrusive regulations, they have a plan B which is „going straight to employers”. We can assume that Peterson would use his recognisability and credibility to convince some employers that the Peterson Academy 1) offers high quality education and 2) is able to confirm that students have mastered the material. Again, all sounds great. But it got me wondering.
I loved your book on education. It provided me with data based confirmations for some intuitive insights I’ve had and also with explanations for ‘glitches’, that until then my wrong model of education couldn’t explain. It’s pretty obvious that schools test students intelligence and conscientiousness. But it’s the non-obvious conformity element that gives you the ‘aha moment’.
With this in mind, let’s go back to the Peterson Academy and evaluate its value proposition. Let’s take a look at some of the courses they offer:
Plato: The Dawn of Thought
Symbolism and Christianity
Postmodern Philosophy
Intro to Cosmology
Deconstructing Decolonization
The History of Western Music
Heroes: The Greatest Leaders in History
Introduction to Nutrition
The Boy Crisis
Intro to Nietzsche
That’s like 60% of their current curriculum. These are all potentially interesting topics and I assume the material is presented in an engaging way – after all, they gathered a really impressive crew of speakers. AND THAT’S THE PROBLEM.
On their Facebook page they run an ad that says:
The world’s greatest lecturers,
Teaching what they love,
To students who only want to learn.
That’s human capital model of education at its finest.
But for a curious mind absorbing interesting material is easy. If your thesis is correct – and I think it is – the important utility of today’s school system is that it tests whether students are willing to plough through a BORING material. If a student diligently studied a huge law textbook because teacher had told him to, he will probably be diligent in doing some dull tasks because his manager told him to.
Never mind that one of the main criticisms of today’s curriculum is that it teaches stuff that is not useful at work and doesn’t teach what employers are looking for. Topics of above-mentioned courses don’t seem to address this problem. But let’s be generous and put that aside.
Given that most jobs require people to do boring, repetitive tasks, isn’t the fact that these lectures are probably very interesting, and are going to be watched specifically by students that have an interest in them, undermining the whole value proposition of the academy? Even if the courses they add in the future were more job-oriented, but still produced as very entertaining, wouldn’t they fail at testing conformity? After all, what does it tell the employer if a young guy who loves Peterson and Nietzsche passionately studies Peterson’s lectures on Nietzsche? There are probably thousands of young people passionate about history, spending dozens of hours per week on YouTube watching documentaries on, let’s say, World War II. For most jobs that’s hardly a merit and perhaps even a risk – that worker might continue to watch while at work when there’s no one around.
I once had a chance to talk with a Peterson’s staff member during on of his events and asked if I could offer him some guests recommendations for his podcast. He agreed and I wrote him an email with three recommendations – one of which was you. I briefly explained that you have very insightful things to say about, among other things, education. Since then I’ve always regretted that JBP never invited you. I don’t want to sound self-righteous, but seeing how he approaches his education business, I’m afraid he might soon regret it as well.
I hope I’m wrong as I would like this project of his to succeed.
And I’m sorry for bothering you with what ended up being a short essay. But it has occupied my thoughts and there’s nobody better to share it with than you. What do you think?
Check out the brief overview videos of the courses on their website - I thought they weren’t that impressive. Seems like it could just be a cash grab (either purposefully or not).
However it is marketed, I think Peterson's Academy is not actually competing with traditional universities but with people looking at education about interesting stuff as a consumption good. The competition is The Teaching Company, which has been offering such material for decades on remarkably similar topics. (I've listened to a lot of their stuff on long drives, just because it was interesting - Rufus Fears on Caesar was a great lecture series, for example). Some evidence that this is the case is that there are reported to be a lot of people signing up who are 30+ years old. These are not people looking of degrees but looking to absorb interesting information.
I think we can also safely predict that the Peterson Academy will not be accredited by any accreditor in the US - accreditation is about enforcing market conformity. There would have to be lots of instructional designers hired to write learning objectives, map them on to assessment techniques, and so on. That's all overhead that Peterson doesn't need and won't want to waste money on.