Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Tim Stenavic on Bloomberg Radio. Children, Well did slowly go
Speaker 1: and all right? Teach your children? Well right, yes, we hope.
Speaker 1: I know my child who's not really a child anymore.
Speaker 1: The music that they pick is just so on point.
Speaker 1: So thank you to the team who does that. Yes,
Speaker 1: why yeah, Crosby Stills love it. Um. When it comes
Speaker 1: to teaching kids, sometimes they need an assist. And I
Speaker 1: have to say my daughter over the years has definitely
Speaker 1: tapped into Cohn Academy. Yeah, business school exactly. I mean
Speaker 1: it got me through business school. I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: have with a s con founder and CEO of CON Academy.
Speaker 1: He joins us on Zoom for you from Mountain View, California.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I gotta tell you, I promised myself when
Speaker 1: I finally did get to interview you this many years
Speaker 1: after business school, I would thank you for the videos
Speaker 1: that you did about discounted cash flows and interest rates
Speaker 1: and all the things that I worked on in my
Speaker 1: personal finance and accounting classes because it was your voice
Speaker 1: that helped guide me through business school. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting because this Carol wasn't available when I was an undergraduate.
Speaker 1: We weren't even talking about YouTube back then. Very please
Speaker 1: to go back with the cell con founder and CEO
Speaker 1: of khn Academy joining us from Mountain View Soul. How
Speaker 1: are you. I'm doing well. Thanks for having me, you know,
Speaker 1: take us back to two thou eight, because it's funny
Speaker 1: and thinking about this interview that we're doing right now.
Speaker 1: You know, we think about online education in the way
Speaker 1: that it really gained so much attention in the early
Speaker 1: part of during lockdowns and when kids were sent home.
Speaker 1: You've been working on con Academy for a dozen years
Speaker 1: by the time the pandemic hit. Take us back there
Speaker 1: and where we are now in some ways earlier. It
Speaker 1: all started back actually in two thousand four, when I
Speaker 1: was tutoring some cousins remotely when I was in Boston,
Speaker 1: they were in New Orleans. I started writing software for them.
Speaker 1: Friends suggest that I make videos for them on YouTube.
Speaker 1: It took on a life of our own, and it
Speaker 1: was in two thousand and eight that I actually set
Speaker 1: up this, this family project as a not for profit
Speaker 1: mission free world class education for anyone anywhere, and called
Speaker 1: it kN Academy. And if we compare that time to
Speaker 1: where we are now, I think now people actually take
Speaker 1: it for granted that, of course, on demand video is
Speaker 1: going to be really useful, uh for for learning. Of course,
Speaker 1: students should be able to have self paced practice. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's not the best use of class time
Speaker 1: for a teacher to just lecture at students and students
Speaker 1: to sit passively and listen. Because students have access to
Speaker 1: on demand video, perhaps it might be a good idea
Speaker 1: to allow students to learn at their own time and pace.
Speaker 1: But if you go back to two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: none of that was mainstream. People thought things like YouTube
Speaker 1: and maybe the Internet generally for the most part, was
Speaker 1: as a toy or or maybe a distraction. But now
Speaker 1: we realize that it's it's central to the education. I
Speaker 1: think the other really good thing that happened is, obviously
Speaker 1: when when we set out as a not for profit
Speaker 1: in the name of trying to level the playing field,
Speaker 1: it's it's predicated on the idea that everyone eventually will
Speaker 1: have access to the internet. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: we weren't anywhere close to that. We're still aren't at perfection,
Speaker 1: but in school environments we've gone a long way in
Speaker 1: the US globally that there's still a lot more work
Speaker 1: to be done, and I think we the pandemic. One
Speaker 1: of the silver linings is it it helped accelerate a
Speaker 1: lot of internet and tech adoption, not just in schools
Speaker 1: but at home as well. How do you think it's
Speaker 1: you know, the impact it's had on how kids learn
Speaker 1: um or helped compliment, supplement you know, classroom time. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think you know, everything is is a double edged sword.
Speaker 1: We all know about all of the things on the
Speaker 1: Internet that maybe aren't the most productive things for kids,
Speaker 1: but in terms of when they are productive on it,
Speaker 1: whether you're talking about kids in elementary school or middle school,
Speaker 1: all the way to med students, it's now become pretty
Speaker 1: mainstream that students are going to vote with their feet
Speaker 1: if there's someone who's just going to lecture at them
Speaker 1: and the students have an option, and they won't show
Speaker 1: up anymore. If you if you visit most med schools,
Speaker 1: the actual electoral halls are pretty empty. The med students,
Speaker 1: who are very diligent students are usually going to watch
Speaker 1: the lecture later on at double speed. UM. So I
Speaker 1: think there's an expectation of Some people say, oh, kids
Speaker 1: these days have less of an attention span. I don't
Speaker 1: think they have less of an attention span necessarily. It's
Speaker 1: more that they have more options and they have higher expectations.
Speaker 1: When we were kids, we're like, Okay, we gotta sit
Speaker 1: in the classroom and just pretend to pay attention and
Speaker 1: look at the clock, and so we're gonna play that
Speaker 1: game game. But but now now you don't have to
Speaker 1: do that. They have they have other things. I think
Speaker 1: they know that if they don't understand something in class.
Speaker 1: Back when we were kids, you'd have to either somehow
Speaker 1: struggle with a textbook, or if you're lucky enough to
Speaker 1: have a family member help you, or or had enough
Speaker 1: resources to get a tutor. And now we're talking about
Speaker 1: very few people. Now people know, yeah, I can go
Speaker 1: to con academy, I can ask the questions, I can
Speaker 1: find other I can do practice problems. I can make
Speaker 1: sure that I understand what I'm doing. I can go
Speaker 1: to YouTube and find other resources. So I think kids
Speaker 1: are actually able to advocate for themselves a lot better
Speaker 1: because they don't. They're not willing to just put up
Speaker 1: with only one modality. Hey, given all the work that
Speaker 1: you've done over the past gosh, I mean it's close
Speaker 1: to twenty years at this point. So I'm I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: you know, how, how how it changes the way you
Speaker 1: think about education with regard to your own kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even back in two thousand kind of candemy really got
Speaker 1: on on folks radar. In two thousand nine, two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, I gave a ted talk whereas, you know,
Speaker 1: let's let's reimagine education, make things more personalized. We shouldn't
Speaker 1: have kids moving forward lockstaff if you don't. If you
Speaker 1: only got a seventy percent on the test, you should
Speaker 1: always have that opportunity incentive to make that an eight percent,
Speaker 1: make that nine. And I wrote a book, One World
Speaker 1: school House, about how how education could change, how you
Speaker 1: could even create a school of the future. And then
Speaker 1: in my oldest I now have three kids, my oldest
Speaker 1: was just entering kindergarten age, and I said, hey, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be a hypocrite. Um, I don't want
Speaker 1: to preach all of these things about mastery, learning, personalization
Speaker 1: and then not have my own kids do that. And
Speaker 1: not only that, but I actually did and continue to
Speaker 1: believe that that is the most powerful way to learn.
Speaker 1: So we started a school, conn Lab School uh where
Speaker 1: now all of my kids go. It's out here in
Speaker 1: northern California. And what we're seeing is when you have
Speaker 1: a school that's really students centered, where you know we have.
Speaker 1: The one edict we have is there's no lectures at
Speaker 1: the school. Everything has to be active. Students can learn
Speaker 1: their own time and pace. But once again, they're not
Speaker 1: in isolation. They get support from their peers, they get
Speaker 1: support from the faculty. When human beings are in the
Speaker 1: room together, they either have Socratic dialogue, or they're doing projects,
Speaker 1: or they're collaborating, or they're tutoring each other. We have
Speaker 1: a motto everyone's a student, everyone's a teacher, and we're
Speaker 1: seeing we we've had our first few graduating classes in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: jinx it, but the kids are doing frankly better than
Speaker 1: you would expect from a traditional environment. We just looked
Speaker 1: at our lower school, which is you know, grades K
Speaker 1: through six, K through five, and our kids are seeing
Speaker 1: about two grade levels of math a year. We just
Speaker 1: launched uh CON World School with Arizona State University, which
Speaker 1: is an online high school, and they they're using similar
Speaker 1: modalities but in an online framework. And they just saw
Speaker 1: on the first semester five times the expected growth in math,
Speaker 1: and I think it was three times expected growth in reading.
Speaker 1: And but once again, it's just because the kids are
Speaker 1: able to learn at their own, their own pace, and
Speaker 1: because they're not learning to be passive and they're learning
Speaker 1: to have more agency over their learning. They're more entrepreneurial,
Speaker 1: they have more of a growth mindset, they're willing to
Speaker 1: take risks. We think they're feeling a lot less of
Speaker 1: the stress and anxiety that we know as a bit
Speaker 1: of an epidemic right now amongst young people. So there's
Speaker 1: not a huge history with con Lab School because you
Speaker 1: only started it a few years ago. But where are
Speaker 1: you in terms of college placement and how you've been
Speaker 1: able to, uh see how these kids have done longitudinally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as I said, the school has been around for
Speaker 1: about eight years. We had this current guarding graduating class
Speaker 1: is going to be our our third But you know,
Speaker 1: this is a school that does not have traditional letter
Speaker 1: grades we measure, but at any point students can improve
Speaker 1: their grade, but out of you know, I remember our
Speaker 1: first graduating class of nine students they went to and
Speaker 1: I'm very sensitive because so many folks index on where
Speaker 1: kids go to school and all of that. But our
Speaker 1: students ended up at some of the top places in
Speaker 1: the world. Um, you know, I don't want to get
Speaker 1: to brand conscious about where they went, but they went
Speaker 1: to let me just say, very very good, very good places.
Speaker 1: And they're even more importantly, we we stay in touch
Speaker 1: with these students and they're really thriving in these environments
Speaker 1: because frankly, the college environment is all about self based learning.
Speaker 1: The college doesn't pretend that way, but really that's what
Speaker 1: it's all about. No, you're absolutely right. You get what
Speaker 1: you put into it, essentially when you go to college. Hey, so,
Speaker 1: sal we're looking at your school, um, collapse school. Can
Speaker 1: you scale that? You want to scale it even further?
Speaker 1: It's in Mountain View, right, but can you go further
Speaker 1: with it or do you want to? Yeah? The whole
Speaker 1: idea and I always tell the team there that is
Speaker 1: not just to start another school in Silicon Valley for
Speaker 1: my kids and other folks in this area. Obviously you
Speaker 1: have to serve the kids in the community. Well, but
Speaker 1: it's really to show there's another way of doing things
Speaker 1: and then essentially sharing with the world how to do
Speaker 1: that so it can it can scale. So one of
Speaker 1: the first ways of scaling is by starting CON World
Speaker 1: School with Arizona, a s U that's actually free to
Speaker 1: any student in Arizona because it has a state charter there,
Speaker 1: and then it's we we hope reasonable cost outside and
Speaker 1: we're working on more states, so you really can get
Speaker 1: a free world class education if you're if you're in
Speaker 1: the states that that supports something like this. So that's
Speaker 1: one skilling mechanism, and we are seeing folks form essentially
Speaker 1: hybrid pods where they're getting the benefits of in person sports, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But then they're able to use the World School UH
Speaker 1: for their socratic dialogue and their seminars and you know,
Speaker 1: being able to meet their advisors and things like that.
Speaker 1: We also are starting more CON Lab schools. It's likely
Speaker 1: we might start one in the Midwest UM and so
Speaker 1: I think we are at the moment. I won't ever
Speaker 1: say we have nailed it. It's a lab school. We're
Speaker 1: constantly iterating, but I think we're starting to scale it
Speaker 1: and that could take multiple forms. It could take an
Speaker 1: online school. It could it could be a share the
Speaker 1: curriculum with other folks. What what, however, we can get
Speaker 1: it out there, Salgion. The numbers work. It's it's really
Speaker 1: tough to be self sufficient as a school. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a private school, so there's you know, tuition. Um.
Speaker 1: But I mean I went to a school that my
Speaker 1: friend's mom started for second grade and the school was
Speaker 1: only around for about ten years. They just couldn't keep
Speaker 1: it going. It was tough. Um, are the numbers working.
Speaker 1: The numbers are working. And what I've always given the
Speaker 1: charge to the school that we should be able to
Speaker 1: be in terms of cost per student per year, cost
Speaker 1: competitive with um some public school districts, and they're huge variation.
Speaker 1: If you look at at the high end, a New
Speaker 1: York City public school spends about forty dollars per student
Speaker 1: per year. A lot of you know Cambridge, Boston, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: they are mid twenties, even approaching thirty dollars per year.
Speaker 1: But then you have other places, including high cost of
Speaker 1: living places like California, where depending on the district, you're
Speaker 1: really looking at more of like ten to fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per year. Right now, if if you were to
Speaker 1: hold all things equal, we have we have to pay
Speaker 1: a lot in real estate expense because we're renting out
Speaker 1: a couple of campuses. But if our real estate expense
Speaker 1: we're similar to what a traditional public school was spending,
Speaker 1: where we we have our cost per student down to
Speaker 1: about twenty dollars per year UM. And and so if
Speaker 1: you include the real estate that it's it's approaching a
Speaker 1: higher number. It's you know, it's probably closer to twenty
Speaker 1: eight thousand, but UM. To answer your question, we we
Speaker 1: intentionally are keeping it much more accessible than the surrounding
Speaker 1: market would support. These numbers don't sound like small numbers
Speaker 1: to anyone anywhere, but especially but if you live in
Speaker 1: the Bay Area, if you live in New York, you'll
Speaker 1: know that a lot of the top independent schools will
Speaker 1: easily charge you fifty or sixty dollars a year UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're we're we're pretty focused on showing
Speaker 1: this model can scale and as an as is accessible
Speaker 1: and also has evidence that isn't just another independent school.
Speaker 1: It's the kids are growing faster and happier. You know,
Speaker 1: in doing this, what been the easy part, what's been
Speaker 1: the difficult parts of doing everything, including school or con
Speaker 1: academy or the whole everything from the get go. Like
Speaker 1: I think about when you started, and I know I remember,
Speaker 1: you know, we talked about Bill Gates being you know,
Speaker 1: a supporter of it. You had some really high profile people,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that helped um, you know, doing the
Speaker 1: Ted talk. But I'm just wondering, as you've done this,
Speaker 1: what's been the easy part, what's the difficult part. Well,
Speaker 1: the easy part is this is something that I've always
Speaker 1: been drawn to, even when you know my past, my
Speaker 1: past careers in tech and just been an analyst at
Speaker 1: a hedge fund, which I both careers I enjoyed, but
Speaker 1: I always was drawn. That's why I started tutoring my cousins.
Speaker 1: That's why I started writing software for them that was
Speaker 1: focused on learning. And that's why I started making videos
Speaker 1: because I enjoyed making these these education videos. So that
Speaker 1: was always the easy part. And whenever I want to recharge,
Speaker 1: even today, that's the kind of stuff that I try
Speaker 1: to really work on. Let me make some videos today.
Speaker 1: The hard part, I would say, the early days, the
Speaker 1: hard part is convincing people to take you seriously, especially
Speaker 1: you know now it's a somewhat mainstream thing to be
Speaker 1: a YouTube influence or whatever else. Back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, two thousand seven, two thousand and eight, it
Speaker 1: was very um let's call it. No one really took
Speaker 1: you seriously. And then once we started to get off
Speaker 1: the ground and people took note. I think when we
Speaker 1: said no, we just don't want to be a YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: We don't want to be another for profit education company.
Speaker 1: We actually want to create an institution for the world
Speaker 1: that actually has a chance of being the safety net
Speaker 1: education system for the world that can reach billions of people.
Speaker 1: I think back then some people might not take that
Speaker 1: so seriously. For a guy operating out of a walk
Speaker 1: in closet, UM, I think you fast forward and yes,
Speaker 1: you know folks like Bill Gates and the Doers, and
Speaker 1: you know there's so many people, um that you know
Speaker 1: I grew up reading about who who have now become
Speaker 1: some of our supporters. But whenever I say those names
Speaker 1: are mind folks that we still need their help, so
Speaker 1: please fo to kind of academy. But um, I think
Speaker 1: now what's gotten easier is when when I take on
Speaker 1: a project. Let's say we started school. We're starting this
Speaker 1: online high school, or we started another not for profit
Speaker 1: called Schoolhouse dot World, which gives free tutoring. They way
Speaker 1: it's able to do is to leverage volunteership. These types
Speaker 1: of things would have been very hard when I was
Speaker 1: just a guy in a closet back in two thousand
Speaker 1: eight or two thousand nine. But now people are willing
Speaker 1: to take it seriously, They're willing to partner. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: the fact that even volunteers show up to Schoolhouse dot
Speaker 1: World and to tutor other people is because there's some
Speaker 1: trust and belief in what we're trying to pull off.
Speaker 1: But even today, I think I think it's a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of what I do is trying to
Speaker 1: get people to believe I really I realized that that's
Speaker 1: like the believe both in our own organization. Like hey,
Speaker 1: hey hey, folks, we're literally trying to move the dial
Speaker 1: for the world. And I know you can get cynical
Speaker 1: about that, but it's doable. So how do I want
Speaker 1: to talk AI? Because you know, we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about BuzzFeed and rising today as a result of
Speaker 1: excuse me, as a result of a partnership that announced
Speaker 1: yesterday with open Ai C three dot Ai share surging
Speaker 1: more than seventeen today. Um, how do you use AI
Speaker 1: and a vacation? Well, there there's you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of what we already know is going on, and
Speaker 1: then there's a lot of potential. Even before these large
Speaker 1: language models like chat, GPT and all of that, we've
Speaker 1: always thought, hey, AI could be used to this is
Speaker 1: it's being used in for profit companies to recommend the
Speaker 1: right add to you. In an education setting, maybe it
Speaker 1: can be used to recommend the right content to you.
Speaker 1: And we've used variations of that in the past at
Speaker 1: Kon Academy. I think what's exciting about these large language
Speaker 1: models is the potential for them to start to act
Speaker 1: like a Socratic tutor, for them to intro to introduce
Speaker 1: modalities that might not have existed before. I know people
Speaker 1: are really worried about this doing essays for students, but
Speaker 1: maybe we can embrace that and say, well, maybe it
Speaker 1: can help the student do something more ambitious. Maybe it
Speaker 1: can help give feedback that Traditionally, when you write an essay,
Speaker 1: at best, it might take you a week or two
Speaker 1: to get the feedback, and then if even if you
Speaker 1: make it better, you may or might not get a
Speaker 1: chance to to get feedback on that. Now you could
Speaker 1: get instant feedback. Uh. I did a little experiment with
Speaker 1: my daughter where we used a large language model to
Speaker 1: co write a story, but then she had a chance
Speaker 1: to talk to one of the characters. That's something that
Speaker 1: just seems like science fiction, but it's now doable. Or
Speaker 1: we're at the cusp of of making these things doable.
Speaker 1: So if you imagine, I think we're in the next year,
Speaker 1: we're going to see layers on top of tools like
Speaker 1: con academy where you might have a tutor and AI tutor. Now,
Speaker 1: once again, I don't think this replaces the human, but
Speaker 1: it just gives more leverage to the human teacher, to
Speaker 1: the human parent, uh, to be able to be able
Speaker 1: to do more. It's like moving beyond when you know
Speaker 1: math right. It used to be what's what's the answer?
Speaker 1: Did you get the answer right? And then it moved
Speaker 1: to wait, what was your thinking and show us the work?
Speaker 1: And okay, you know that was more important than really
Speaker 1: kind of the final to some extent or as important
Speaker 1: to getting the answer right. Hey, just quickly, one last thing.
Speaker 1: Um just got about forty seconds left her What do
Speaker 1: you think about the a C T S and S
Speaker 1: A T S. A lot of it went away during
Speaker 1: the pandemic. Good move of like do we have to
Speaker 1: move away from that stuff? Well, those tests is perfect.
Speaker 1: But I always tell people if you don't like standardized tests,
Speaker 1: what part do not like the standardized or the test?
Speaker 1: And if you need to have some way of of
Speaker 1: of understanding, and especially now that you have chat GPT
Speaker 1: that can write your college essays, this is actually the
Speaker 1: fairest mechanism by which to be able to see who's
Speaker 1: college ready brilliant we have not. That is just an
Speaker 1: interesting way of thinking about this and I don't like
Speaker 1: test part. To answer your sal thank you so much,
Speaker 1: good luck. Such an incredible organization that you've created. Um
Speaker 1: and as we said, what almost twenty years in, it's
Speaker 1: pretty remarkable. Sal Con He is founder and chief executive
Speaker 1: officer of con Academy, joining us via zoom from Mountain View, California.
Speaker 1: Just google them you can find out all the incredible
Speaker 1: work that they are. Yeah, it's incredible. For a long time.
Speaker 1: More than fifty languages used in more than a hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety countries, a hundred and forty five million registered users,