Creating A New University

Strong Where They Are Weak

Although we are creating a new university in what seems to be a highly crowded market with large incumbents steeped in history and prestige, we are not competing with the traditional university. Our focus and jobs to be done compliment those that the traditional universities do not focus on. Our structure does not challenge traditional universities against their strongest assets, nor are we trying to copy their model. We are focused on strengthening assets in their weak areas to attract the students who don’t feel that traditional universities will serve their needs for education well. These students feel they are paying more than they would like for a traditional university experience. They may be an educationally qualified non consumer, a student who cannot afford to attend a traditional university but would embrace less expensive alternatives, even without usual amenities. They have a strong desire for education that is meaningful to them, has utility in the real world, helps them become better people and citizens of society, and succeeds where traditional education has failed them.

The Traditional University

The jobs that a traditional university, imitated from the Harvard model, was designed to do, it does exceptionally well. These are the jobs of discovery, memory, and mentoring (Christensen, Eyring, 2011).

Discovery

Discovery is the creation of & dissemination of new knowledge. This creates an emphasis on scholarship rather than teaching. As a result, more resources and attention are given to research, tenure faculty, and graduate students. The research they conduct creates breakthroughs in thinking, understanding, and innovations that our societies greatly benefit from. However, when the focus of an institution is publication and cutting edge research, professors care less about teaching, especially undergraduate courses that are not as exciting as new knowledge. Graduate students help facilitate research, so they are valued over undergraduates. Ultimately, this leads to a second rate education for those coming into college for the first time and leaving woefully underprepared for life afterwards.

Memory

Memory is the culmination of knowledge from the past and recalling the achievements and failures so that students may learn from them. Traditional universities do an excellent job at keeping record of what has occurred in the world to help frame context for students to have foundational knowledge of particular domains. This is highly important because if we don’t know where we came from, we can’t make informed decisions about where we are going. However, this is where the traditional university falls short. It does not help students to understand how this past knowledge fits into today’s context, how it might be used in the real world, and how it particularly connects to what each student finds meaningful.

Mentoring

Mentoring is the transformative learning experience that is the result of a personal, intimate, lasting connection with a wise teacher. These mentors not only help students to close knowledge gaps, but help them to learn from the mentor’s mistakes and push them beyond what they thought possible in their thinking. Unfortunately this crucial relationship often only occurs for a few students when in fact everyone could benefit from such an impactful relationship.

A traditional university also has strong assets that are highly sought after by those students who are seeking the “classic college experience”. These assets include world renowned, highly intelligent faculty & physical campuses with immense amounts of amenities. With these assets and a desire to imitate the Harvard model, comes a hefty price tag. We recognize that our challenge as a university is to decrease the price premium of higher education while increasing its contribution to students and society.

The Evolve University Model

The following table and subsequent sections of this chapter will describe the key differences of the university DNA that Evolve has adapted for a new university model.

Focus On Students Not Research

Our primary purpose at Evolve is to prepare students with knowledge and skills necessary to make positive change in their life and the world around them. This requires Evolve to recognize students as the primary focus and constituent of the university. Our visionary goal is to solve complex problems in the world, and in order to do that we believe that our primary job is to educate students to use knowledge effectively, not merely create it.

This means that we do not have research, publication, or scholarly objectives. We have no research facilities. Faculty is 100% focused on the education of students. We also don’t chase funding for research grants and funds are directly related to the costs of educating the students.

Online Not In Person

The most powerful mechanism of cost reduction for a university is online learning (Christensen, Eyring, 2011). However we are not simply incorporating the same dynamics as in person instruction and merely transmuting them online resulting in a second or third rate education. We utilize the strengths of online learning to create immersive learning experiences for students no matter their location. We are able to compile the best learning resources and scale access far beyond a physical locations ability. Furthermore, a measure of personal intimacy can be achieved at a distance. Caring faculty can reveal their personalities online, offering collective and individual encouragement and inviting introspection that transcends formal curriculum.

"THE MOST POWERFUL MECHANISM OF COST REDUCTION FOR A UNIVERSITY IS ONLINE LEARNING"

Evolve uses an online learning platform to house all of our operations, learning resources, student engagements, and classrooms. Students pursue study through web based material from e-textbooks to video lectures which leverage the best third party content from around the world. We utilize resources such as Open Course Ware (OER)  & online MOOC’s such as Coursera & Edx which enable us to keep costs low while simultaneously having the most useful content. By having these resources available at any time and anywhere, there are no set course or lecture times and students move through courses at their own pace.

Experiential Active Learning Not Passive Lectures

Learning sciences indicate that the widely used and traditional pedagogical approach of lectures is the least effective way for students to learn. On the other hand, active learning requires students to engage through activities which leads to higher comprehension and retention. Simply stated, we learn by doing. At Evolve we don’t want to merely transmute knowledge. We want students to acquire and actively put it into practice. In order to achieve this we have gathered 26 principles, and broken them down by Knowles’ theory of Andragogy, the art and science of helping adults learn (Smith, 2002).

These learning principles are utilized within a flipped classroom approach. Students engage in self directed study through the online resources compiled together on the learning platform. They are free to complete this study at their discretion of time and pace. The learning platform keeps track of their progress and periodically evaluates their mastery. Students engage in application of their knowledge through various forms of activities and contexts. One form is through group seminars that bring together students for engagement activities.

These Engagement Activities include:

• Peer instruction
• Debates
• Socratic method discussions
• Collaborative work in small breakout groups
• Task or problem based learning
• Role playing
• Game based activities

The next form is through immersive experiences where students are working both individually and collaboratively on problems that are based in real world situations. These problems come in the form of consulting projects, community initiatives, and personal endeavors related to their missions & skill trees.

Situated within Knowles’ Andrology Theory, the 26 learning principles are:

Motivation

Learners want to be intrinsically motivated by their own personal connection and what is meaningful to them. This means helping students understand themselves, their purpose, and aligning their education to that.

The principles in motivation are:

1. Determining motivation to learn: If someone wants to build up the motivation to learn something, they should dive deep into their why. Why do they want to learn something? How will they use it? Why will their life be better once they have? Answering questions like these creates intrinsic value for education. (Levi, 2019)
2. Evoking Emotion: Emotions are signals to ourselves about external information that is meaningful to our internal values. Emotion focuses attention on incoming information and devotes extra resources to store that information in our brain and bodies. Evoking emotion while teaching someone something will generally enable them to recall that information more effectively. (Erk et al., 2003, Levine & Pizarro, 2004; McGaugh, 2003, 2004)
3. Inducing a flow state: According to positive psychology, flow is a mental state in which a person is fully immersed in an activity with immense focus, full engagement, and enjoyment of the process. A prerequisite for a flow state is that the person must be performing an activity for intrinsic purposes. In order to induce a flow state a person must have a clear progress towards a goal, must have immediate feedback, and most importantly, have a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and their own perceived skills. (Csikszentmihályi, 2005) The science of learning supports this idea of desirable difficulty in the fact that the best learning occurs when a task is not so easy as to be boring but not so hard as to be over the learner’s head. (Bjork, 1988, 1999; VanLehn et al., 2007)

Self Concept

Learners want to be involved in the planning and evaluation of our education. They have a desire for autonomy and self directed learning. This means including students in the development of their educational journey and promoting lifelong learning.

The principles in self concept are:

1. Drawing a map: For self directed learning to occur effectively, one must understand how a subject works, what kinds of skills and information must be mastered, and what methods are available to do so more effectively. (Young, 2019) Essentially, learners need a map to navigate the abundance of information available to them. In developing a learners map they need to determine why (motivation to learn), what (skills and knowledge required), how (resources, environment, and methods).
2. Allow cross pollination: Encouraging students to study multiple subject areas from diverse knowledge sources allows them to choose subjects that matter to them and taps into their passion and enthusiasm for learning. Consequently, this increases their learning as learning one skill or knowledge set will have significant, unforeseen benefits when learning something else. (Levi, 2019) Exposing students to a variety of knowledge builds their ability to take in new information from different source types. It also creates more anchor points for preexisting knowledge and forms complex neural networks for everything we understand. Furthermore, it is easier to pay attention to something new than to sustain paying attention to the same material, extended over time.
3. Inducing brute force learning: In order to build a comprehensive understanding of something, students should learn something from as many different perspectives as possible. We often don’t learn something fully during our first exposure to the subject. It takes repeated exposure, from different angles, in order to build a fully comprehensive mental model of that subject. (Levi, 2019)
4. Create experiments: Once a learner has reached a certain level of mastery, in order to advance their understanding and skills further they will need to experiment beyond the basics. This is when the learner takes more control in trying new approaches to reaching their goals, acquiring novel resources, creating unique styles, to solve problems creatively and do things others have not explored. Our society often rewards not only not only efficiency in solving problems but originality. (Young, 2019)

Experience

Learners come to new learning environments with a growing reservoir of previous experience that becomes a foundation upon which neural networks can be created. This means we should actively leverage a student’s prior knowledge & experience when educating them. This occurs in two broad flavors: establishing foundational knowledge and using pre existing associations.

The Principles in experience are:

Foundational Knowledge

1. Build on prior knowledge: When learning something new, the more associations you can find with information already stored in memory, the better (e.g., Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Levi, 2019)
2. Present foundational material first: When teaching complex information, learners more efficiently acquire new knowledge when it can make existing associations with basic material previously learned. (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000) Presenting foundational knowledge first provides a backbone to which one can attach additional information, allowing an organized mental structure over time.

Pre-existing Associations

1. Inducing dual coding: Homo Sapiens were adapted to learning in environments that are vivid, visual, and experiential which is known as the “picture superiority effect”. (Levi, 2019) The brain stores multiple representations in memory using different senses (most powerfully smell, taste, and visual) which are stored in different regions of the brain. (Kosslyn 1994; Levi, 2019) By inducing learning that cues several senses, it allows more entry points into the ability to later recall the information.
2. Promote chunking: Complex material can be organized into manageable unit chunks that increase learning capabilities. (Brown, Roediger, &McDaniel, 2014). When material is chunked, it creates associations that allow people to easily store information in their memory. It is optimal to create 3-4 chunks with 3-4 items per chunk.
3. Use stories & associative chaining: Stories have been used for centuries to pass knowledge along. These are powerful learning mechanisms because they create an interlocking sequence of associations that has a narrative arc. This allows students to create chucks from parts of the story but, more than that, they also can use each part of the story to cue the next part when they later recall the material from memory. (Bower & Clark, 1969; Grasser, Olde, & Klettke, 2002).

Readiness

Learners want and will remember more prominently information that is relevant and useful for them right now. This requires that learning experiences facilitate active use of concepts through practice and participation of the learner. These experiences illicit the recall of information that is pertinent to the situation and guidance towards mastery of that information.

The principles in readiness are:

Recall

1. Evoke deep processing: The more cognitive operations one performs while paying attention to such operations, the more likely they are to later recall that information. (Craig et. al. 2006) When one creates operations to use information in contexts relevant to them, they will remember it more effectively than if they simply took in the information and understood it.
2. Avoiding decay with space repetition: Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve hypothesizes the decline of memory retention in time with no effort to retain it. (Levi, 2019) Trying to learn and store information by cramping it in one sitting leaves it vulnerable to decay with time. To avoid decay, information should be learned, recalled, and used repeatedly over a relatively long period of time using spaced learning and spaced repetition. (Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014; Young 2019).
3. Avoiding forgotten cues with proceduralization: Some memories of information may have not been entirely forgotten, but rather the retrieval cue for that set of information has been forgotten and rendered that information harder to access. Particularly when learning skills, when a knowledge set is practiced repeatedly it allows for a set of procedures to be created that is more robust and tends to endure longer than declarative memory. (Young, 2019)
4. Avoiding interference with retrieval practice: There are two forms of interference to avoid. Proactive interference occurs when material you have learned previously interferes with learning new material. Retroactive interference occurs when learning new material impairs your ability to recall previously learned material. By engaging in retrieval practice - trying to recall facts and concepts from memory - it creates distinctive retrieval cues for the learner. (Anderson & Neely, 1996).
5. Practice mnemonics & visualization: In order to recall highly complex and difficult to remember information, mnemonic tools and strategies can be utilized (Young, 2019). The most powerful mnemonic strategies utilize visualization techniques because visual memory is vastly superior to rote memorization. To create powerful visualizations, they should be highly detailed, bizarre in nature, leverage existing knowledge, and clearly symbolize the information you are trying to remember (Levi, 2019)

Mastery

1. Break skills down: When learning a new skill or knowledge set it is best to look at it as a whole trying to understand the objective and result. Next, you want to divide the skill into the smallest possible chunks and determine the rate determining steps - the chunks of the skill that determine the overall level of performance (Young, 2019). Students should drill practice and master these separately. Then, link them together in progressively larger groupings until the entire skill is mastered. (Coyle, 2010).
2. Engaging in deliberate deep practice: Deep practice requires repetition, but a repetition that is focused on operating on the edge of your competence. (Coyle, 2010). Purposely making mistakes and paying careful attention in order to correct performance and update mental models of a skill or knowledge set. Furthermore, overlearning, or additional practice beyond what is required to perform adequately, can increase the length of time that memories are stored (Young, 2019)
3. Create feedback loops: Feedback allows someone practicing to correct suboptimal mental models for higher performance (Brown, Roedinger, & McDaniel, 2014; Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993). By creating feedback loops you can evaluate your performance, learn from it and try it again. There are three effective ways to elicit feedback. Outcome feedback assess if you are performing skills correctly by determining if your performance resulted in the outcome you wanted. Informational feedback assesses what parts of a skill you may be doing wrong or your misuse of knowledge. Corrective feedback gives direction to how you can fix what you are doing wrong in practice of a skill (Young, 2019).
4. Eliciting the generation effect: By simply recalling information to use in novel situations  - especially when effort is required - allows the learner to reconstruct and strengthen their mental representation of that information. (Levi 2019; Jacoby, 1978) This can be further strengthened by generating that information in order to teach others. Teaching forces the learner to imagine new and alternative ways to understand a subject so they may create simpler, creative ways to transmit that understanding to others. As others begin learning the material they elicit unique questions that shake out mental models of the one teaching. It also creates high motivation for someone to fully understand material (Levi, 2019).

Orientation

Learners want to know not only why this information is valuable; they want to know how they are actually going to use it and whether or not it will help them reach their goals. This means an effort should be made to link knowledge and skills with problems in the learner’s life. Furthermore, learning should be orientated towards problems and solutions with hands-on experience.

The principles in orientation are:

Contexts

1. Link learning directly: In order to help mitigate the pitfalls of transfer, learning should be tied closely to the situations and contexts that they will be applied. By using learned knowledge in real life situations, it illustrates the similar subtle details that are shared among real situations that are as obvious in the abstract environment of the classroom. (Young, 2019) This can be achieved through strategies such as project based learning or immersive experiences.
2. Establishing different contexts: Far transfer occurs when learned information in one context is retrieved and applied to a very different context. In order for this to occur, the learner must encounter a large group of varied examples to formulate a firm understanding of the underlying principles that are common among them. (Hakel & Halpern, 2005; Van Merrienboer et al., 2006) Practice should be taken to applying these principles to novel situations.
3. Exploiting appropriate examples: Abstract ideas are most easily understood with examples; consequently, by showing multiple examples of the same concepts it creates clusters of associations that increase the likelihood of transfer. (Hakel & Halpern, 2005).

Principles

1. Establishing principles: memory of information is enhanced when the abstract principles that underlie the information are made explicit (Chi & VanLehn, 2012)  By understanding the principles of knowledge sets at their deepest structural level students can apply them to numerous situations.
2. Develop intuition: As learners apply principles to novel situations they will begin to develop a level of intuition about which situations require the application of those principles. This requires learners to start with concrete examples and move towards ones that will prove or disprove their understanding of the underlying principles. Additionally, students should not give up on hard problems easily and instead ask a lot of questions to gain understanding (Young, 2019).

Knowledge Curators Not Creators

Information is ubiquitous, easily accessible through a few clicks of a mouse. We are not content experts, we are learning experts, an assembled team of folks who really know about learning and learning design. For this reason, we do not focus on creating curriculum and disseminating through lectures. Rather we believe that some of the world’s top experts and educational institutions have already published excellent resources that can better teach information than we could as a new university. Does it really make sense for every college to recreate the same class over and over again?

So Evolve does not develop or teach any of its own courses outside of the core foundational curriculum. Instead, our course curators identify and bring in whichever resources best fit our students and their outcomes.  These courses include self-diagnostic tools to determine areas of competency, readings, videos, guided tutorials, interactive exercises, and other optional learning tools.  

In order to keep learning outcomes consistent and repeatable for each student, regardless of the unique path they have chosen for their mission and skill trees, our faculty work together to assure that learning resources and assessments are structured in similar ways. This means that third party content is not merely handed to the students, but rather molded to fit our learning pedagogy. We keep this consistency by having a library of course wireframe templates, activities, and procedures that result in the learning outcomes we wish to achieve.

Team Faculty Not Single Tenure Professors

We believe that students should have more than a sage on the stage and instead have an entire team to support a student’s learning. We act primarily as facilitators of knowledge rather than as the expert source of knowledge. In addition to the other members of the Evolutionary Board of Advisors provided to our students, the learning experience is facilitated by four different roles. First, curriculum curators bring together the third party content and structure it in a cohesive manner that best facilitates student learning and engagement based on the science of learning. Second, active learning facilitators engage students through collaborative activities during group sessions through activities that apply the knowledge learned outside the classroom to real world contexts and problems. Third, mastery evaluators, measure and assess students progress towards learning outcomes and skill mastery. Fourth, self study tutors frequently check in with students during their self study and help them to overcome hurdles related to the material in which they are going through.

"WE ACT PRIMARILY AS FACILITATORS OF KNOWLEDGE RATHER THAN AS THE EXPERT SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE."

Rather than having faculty that gain tenure and are guaranteed their employment regardless of their learning outcomes for students, we consistently evaluate each member of our team against performance indicators related to student learning outcomes. Our approach is student first, so our team must consistently be delivering the best education for students or they will need to be replaced with those that can.

Missions Not Majors

In a traditional university, students must take general education courses and then pick between hundreds of predetermined majors. These courses and majors may or may not truly align with the students and their passion. Moreover, students are not able to determine if a particular major is for them without spending time, money, and energy pursuing a major and switching majors later losing all their progress towards graduation. Because universities put so much emphasis on research & graduate school, the undergraduate education does not prepare students for entering the real world but rather prepares them for further education only attained by continuing in graduate school.

At Evolve we break down the traditional universities ideas about majors, undergraduate vs graduate, and general education. First, instead of general education that requires taking dozens of 101 courses, we have identified the key skills that are transferable to any endeavour and help students become transformative citizens of society. Society pays outsized rewards to those who can make high-stakes decisions and solve problems based on cognitive skills not subject to purley analytical models. These skills are gained through our Foundational Courses.

Next, we don’t delineate undergraduate and graduate. Rather every student that comes through Evolve receives an education and skills that prepares them for the real world, personally and professionally, without the need for further education. Our education could be most akin to a combination of undergraduate and graduate into one. We do, however, promote lifelong learning and students are welcome to return as frequently as they like to re skill in the future.

Finally, rather than create majors, we have students declare missions. These missions are modular, customizable tracks defined by skill trees, with technical certifications nested within their graduation degree. While a traditional university may have a breadth of degree options, we have individually tailored tracks for each student.

Increased Attention To Values Not Rational Ambiguity

Students go to college for more than narrow academia. They have reached a turning point in their life when they discover themselves, their passions, their values, and their identity separate from their influences of their childhood. College is a rite of passage into adulthood that warrants an exploration of who students want to become and the impact they want to have with their life. Derek Bok noted “Two-Thirds of all freshman consider it ‘essential’ or ‘very important’ that college help them develop their personal values” (Bok, 2008) Students want access to education and mentors who can speak both from an academic background and from personal experience to help them through this time of uncertainty.

Through the support of their EBA, curriculum specifically designed to explore their values, and tying their passions with their missions and skill trees, Evolve surpasses the traditional universities ability to help students navigate these jobs.

Measurable Learning Outcomes Not Academic Honors

What you measure grows so it is crucial to focus attention on the outcomes that matter most. For too long traditional universities have not been held accountable for the quality of the education they promise to deliver. Furthermore, universities must consider not only how good an educational offering is, but how good it is for what it costs. We must shift the emphasis from things that matter to scholars and ranking agencies to things that matter to students and society. Ultimately, those concerns lie in producing capable civic minded graduates and economy stimulating innovations.

This requires success measures related to learning outcomes rather than academic honors. This shift would look like the following:

Traditional Success Measures:

• Number of students enrolled
• Average ACT/SAT Score
• Number of National Merit Finalists
• Number of Rhodes/ Marshall Scholars
• Number of advanced degrees granted
• Ratio of undergraduate to graduate students
• Number of courses offered
• Number of majors offered
• Number of graduate programs
• Number of academic departments
• Number of tenure faculty
• Number and size of facilities
• Number of publications
• Number of scholarly prize winning faculty
• Quantity of external research funding

Possible New Success Measures

• Number of graduates per year
• Institutional cost per graduated student
• Student cost per degree earned
• Average time to graduation
• Average debt load of graduates
• Industry certification pass rate
• Job placement rate
• Average starting salary of graduates
• Average starting salary of graduates
• Lifelong salary outlook of graduates
• Alumni satisfaction
• Quality of foundational education program
• Quality of missions & skill tree programs
• Employer desirability of graduates
• Degree of student engagement in learning
• Degree of curricular outcome orientation
• Quality of engagement opportunities
• Degree of real world problems being encountered
• Degree of skills and knowledge applied to problems by students

Decentralized City Hubs Not A Campus

One of the traditional university’s strongest assets is it’s campus which consequently is also it’s biggest expense. The relationships and community formed through the physical interactions on campus are invaluable. Having everything merely online is the biggest downfall of most online institutions. Although the majority of Evolve’s operations and student learning occurs online, we still understand the power of having a physical community for students to engage in. This will occur in two stages for Evolve.

The first phase, in addition to taking courses online, Evolve students also gather once a week at a local building or meetinghouse or virtually through online groups, where they participate in learning and leadership activities associated with their courses, build friendships, and get support. We will use an existing network of buildings across major cities to partner with in hosting these communities.

"HAVING EVERYTHING MERELY ONLINE IS THE BIGGEST DOWNFALL OF MOST ONLINE INSTITUTIONS."

The second phase is Evolve living and learning community buildings in major cities around the world. These buildings serve two purposes. First, the buildings give students the opportunity to live with a community of people who are all developing and working towards their mission. An extremely important aspect of traditional colleges that aid in students development as a whole person is sharing comradery within a tribe of individuals. Breaking bread together and sharing who you are and what you care about is part of the learning process. Based on Dunbar’s number, the ideal size for a tribe of people is 100-150 people. Once you go beyond that, people become dehumanized and the connection falters. So learning hub cohorts will be capped at this amount to allow for the most connection and flourishing of people living in these communities.

Second, the building acts as a point of contact for the community to access resources and build a network within the host city.  This building is a 24-hour residential and multipurpose building with work spaces, resource centers, presentation spaces, classroom access points, and everything students need to meet other smart people, apply their skills and knowledge, and even operate and start businesses. Students have access to large communal spaces where they could get together and work. The building can host mentors and network connections to visit, present, hold events, and work with students. Because students would be paying rent anywhere else anyways, student’s are charged rent which helps to sustain the building financially.

"TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD, YOU MUST EXPERIENCE IT."

By distributing administration across community hubs, it decreases the amount of overhead while also facilitating internal communication. It also allows to hire staff that are native to the host cities, which is crucial for reaching out to external networks in a poised way that is embedded in the culture of that region.

By having these community hubs in the fabric of its host city, it allows students to utilize the resources of a city such as restaurants, gyms, healthcare, and other resources that are costly for a university to facilitate itself. As a bonus, students become more culturally educated by having to navigate the city and interact with the community there. As travel greatly improves one’s world perspective, students are encouraged to travel and live in these different community hubs. This allows students to travel and rotate between hubs so they have the best access to resources they need to solve their problem and can experience a variety of cultures and perspectives. To understand the world, you must experience it.

Certification Not Accreditation

Accreditation for higher education institutions is voluntary. In order to receive government tuition grants and subsidized loans, however, a university must seek accreditation. The transfer of credits between schools also requires both institutions to be accredited. Beyond that, research known as the “Signaling Theory of Universities” shows that the greatest value a university degree provides is it’s “Stamp” of credibility. It’s a signal to potential employers that the graduate is adaptable with 21st century skills and is work ready (Serna, 2020).

However the attributes accreditation is currently based on are less than telling of an actual students precursors to success. Accreditation measures inputs like campus facilities, faculty credentials, and academic programs and outputs like graduation rates and average time to degree. These measurements have easily been inflated in the past. Measures that would be more suitable for the accountability of the university would be cost/price per student, learning and civic participation outcomes, and earning results post graduation.

"THE GREATEST VALUE A UNIVERSITY DEGREE PROVIDES IS ITS STAMP OF CREDIBILITY"

The question arises of whether Evolve should seek accreditation. Outlined here are both options and the paths necessary for their success.

Becoming Accredited

The basic requirement to accreditation is that new institutions must operate for at least 5 years and graduate students before they can be accredited. This poses a challenge because students are unlikely to attend a new unaccredited university when they have offers to other institutions providing accreditation and subsequent funding to attend.

This leaves 3 paths for accreditation:

1. Start as a fresh, freestanding institution and wait for the first students to graduate before applying for accreditation.
2. Take over a previously established and accredited institution and start Evolve from with inside that institution.
3. To partner with another institution with accreditation that could host Evolve until it had its own graduates and could seek accreditation as a stand alone institution.

Not Becoming Accredited

As stated before, accreditation serves as a signal that the institution and program are actually preparing students for life after graduation with skills, knowledge, and utility to society. Because this is at the core of Evolve, we believe that our education could circumvent the need for accreditation and develop higher standards for our institution to be held accountable to. However this would mean developing alternative benefits to what traditional accreditation offers.

Some possible alternatives could be:

• Partnering with business and organizations to certify that our education produces students exceeding their skill gaps and creating a “stamp” of excellence
• Partnering with other top universities to ensure time spent is transferable to other programs.
• Proving alternative forms of financial aid to students and keeping costs low to dismiss the need for government aid.

Culture

Being as we are searching for the best solutions for the world’s greatest challenges, we do not care who or where they come from. We also want to cultivate the culture of each individual student and expand their perspectives, beliefs, and how to interact with cultures beyond their own. So we strive to bring together a diverse group of people from students to faculty, placing them in complex environments. We also strive to create a community within the university that allows for cross pollination ideas, backgrounds, value systems, and cultures and then actively reflecting on how these may fit an individual’s worldview.

We achieve this through a few means. First we have a “blind” admissions process to not mitigate biases based demographics or socioeconomic status. We also market and outreach to students around the globe, and have no quotas to meet for a certain ethnicity.

The second thing we do is have what would be the equivalent to Hogwarts houses. Students are randomly assigned to these houses upon admission. Each of the houses have community driven practices that create an overall family. Instead of athletic sports events, we host problem solving competitions, much like XPRIZE, where houses compete to solve a complex problem. This brings an opportunity for collaboration of disciplines, a strengthening of community and comradery, and introduces gamification to their studies.

Within the houses are cohorts of students made up of no more than 150 people (Dunbar’s number). These cohorts live in community hubs or are connected together in online communities throughout different cities. This allows for students to build personal relationships in a small tribe of culturally diverse communities.

To develop an overall university culture and spirit, we host annual feasts and festivals where students share in celebration. During this time, influential leaders and speakers from the community present alongside students to share and celebrate their work.

We also encourage students to explore the cities from their different communal hubs and regularly plan exploration trips, community engagement activities, and cultural outings. We also engage communities through the various internships and consulting projects students complete.

Building A Brand, Sharing A Vision

Our Marketing efforts are necessary to spread the word about our new and innovative university. We must both simultaneously position ourselves as a candidate among the top universities, yet radically set ourselves apart from the others. We need to be clever at building awareness among the right kind of students so that they are intrigued by Evolve, want to apply, and attend should the school be a great fit for them. Within our marketing we must respect the students hunger to learn, eagerness to make an impact, and a desire for something different. With this in mind, our marketing serves two broad goals: 1) to build awareness about Evolve’s vision and education among our ideal students and those that influence them (parents, teachers, educators, counselors, relevant thought leaders) and 2) finding the ideal students who may be interested in attending Evolve.

Focusing on building a brand is crucial for a new entrant in the higher education category. In our marketing we need to articulate the essence of our brand,  what makes it different, and convey the essence to external audiences. This will be achieved through strong imagery. As Robert Greene reflects in the 48 Laws of Power “The visual strikes with an emotional power and immediacy that leaves no gaps for reflection or doubt...The visual is the easiest route to their hearts” He describes that the most effective way to use visuals are to fuse images and symbols that have never been seen together, but their historical, narrative, or psychological associations clearly demonstrate the new idea. (Greene, Elffers, 1998) For this we will begin to look at the history of powerful university symbols, gods of education, prominent self learners, and so on. Our brand needs to transcend time, to feel like it’s been there for decades and will continue to be here for decades.

"OUR BRAND NEEDS TO TRANSCEND TIME, TO FEEL LIKE ITS BEEN THERE FOR DECADES AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE HERE FOR DECADES."

In contrast, it must also portray a rebellion from the status quo. It must be innovative and speak to a need for change. However we do so with a support to foundational values and traditions of the past. We fully understand we stand on the shoulders of giants and must respect that our revolution builds upon great triumphs of the past.

Furthermore, a great cause can capture the minds and hearts of those we speak to, but once that initial excitement is over and to avoid the disinterest that follows, we must align our actions with the self interest of our students. Evolve is specifically designed to do so which makes it a worthy advisory against the goliath of traditional higher education.

Our marketing contains 3 broad categories:

Content Marketing:

• Release Classes for free online through alternative media outlets such as podcasts, youtube, and email courses to showcase our curriculum, attract self starters, and educate those who are not able to have the full Evolve experience.
• Media and public relations campaigns in both traditional media outlets and independent media outlets for editorial coverage
• Evolve media network to share the vision, principles, and reach a global audience through entertainment that affects society at large. The media network works in all major media channels including social media, podcasts, live streams, and blogs.

Influencer Marketing:

• Partnership with organizations that already have our students and communicate with their students through the organizations channels including email, social media, events, & joint activities
• Partnership with thought leaders and influencers of our ideal student and communicating through their channels.
• Share our model and results with employing businesses and organizations to strengthen network relationships and excite them to the point they are urging students to attend Evolve.

Cultural Marketing:

• Community hubs with outreach officers whose primary objective is to connect and share information about Evolve’s Education. We hire those directly from the geographical area and culture where a hub resides because they are more knowledgeable about that area and its cultural values. This results in deeper ties and tailored messaging.
• Our content and message is tailored for each culture and the specific media outlets they use. While the meat of the message remains the same, the modes and channels of engagement we use will vary by region.

Three Prongs To Educating Society

Not every person will come through Evolve. However, we still strive to impact the world at large, reaching everyone through change, in a three pronged approach. We plan to bring education, and therefore evolution, to all through Entertainment, Education,& Philosophy. These three keystones act as phases of education that a person and our society goes through.

Entertainment: Understanding The Past

From the beginning of our species, we have been passing along collective knowledge through entertainment, specifically story telling. Cavemen drew pictures on walls telling stories of hunting & their tribes. We shared stories around the fire that taught everyone life lessons. Plays, dances, songs, have been used across cultures to pass along knowledge about life and what it means to live. These stories carried underlying principles, lessons, and knowledge passed from generation to generation.

Modern day society is no different, the mediums have just changed. Through books, movies, video games, podcasts, tv shows, we continue to tell stories that fundamentally change the way we think and pass along teachings and new ideas. Whether you’re watching the Lord of the Rings or reading Harry Potter, these stories draw us in because they hold knowledge deeper and older than the medium they are transmitted through.

Entertainment also holds three powerful attributes to it as well: It meets people where they are; It evokes emotion and makes people feel the lessons; It creates gamification in our lives.

As a collective, people are not always trying to better themselves or seeking out new knowledge. It is more pleasurable to be entertained by something than to be learning something new. So in order to change someone’s beliefs, to educate them, you must meet them where they are. If you can’t take Muhamed to the mountain, take the mountain to Muhamed.

Storytelling and entertainment also evoke emotions that allow people to not just get the lessons on a logical level, but feel it on an emotional level. People don’t change until they feel the emotion to do so in their body. We are constantly seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.

I also believe that certain forms of entertainment like video games create a fun environment to learn and be challenged. Our brains are wired with dopaminergic responses and a prebuilt system that asks us to gamify our world. It is our innate human drive to be challenged, to win and be significant, and to want to get better at something. The beauty of gamification is often two fold: telling a story and creating growth opportunities for the player.

A consequence of the current education model has been an emphasis on extrinsic motivators such as grades and degrees. With our curriculum and emphasis on tying learning with what a student cares about, we are trying to amplify intrinsic motivation. However, the human animal is wired to search for rewards, and many do not necessarily undertake learning for the sake of learning. This means that we still need a way to use entertainment in the learning process in order to not only make learning beneficial to the students lives, but also make it enjoyable for them as well.

"YOU MUST REACH THEM ON A DEEP EMOTIONAL AND EMBODIED LEVEL WITH STORIES OF PAST KNOWLEDGE THAT ARE OLDER THAN TIME."

For these reasons, the first phase of evolving an individual is to reach them on a deep emotional and embodied level with stories of past knowledge that are older than time. We use these stories in our content marketing to draw individuals to the Evolve education. As stories were passed down through spoken word before writing or video, we will start there as well with podcasts.

Education: Acting In The Present

This guide has given light to how education is to be the medium for which we equip individuals with the knowledge and skills they need to take action in their lives. Once someone has the past knowledge and values passed through the generations, it is their duty to use it within their context to make the world a better place. It is not enough to simply know things, they must be able to put it into action.

"IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO SIMPLY KNOW THINGS, THEY MUST BE ABLE TO PUT IT INTO ACTION."

Education is the second phase because until people are inspired, intrinsically motivated, and understand who they are and what history they have come from, they will not seek education. However once people have these prequities, they will long to learn the skills that will move them towards their goals and who they want to become beyond the past. They will want to embark on their own Hero’s Journey. Evolve will be there to help aid them on their journey.

Philosophy: Contemplating A Better Future

Our goal is not to create individuals who can regurgitate old information or be highly skilled machines in the workplace, but to liberate individuals with abilities to think for themselves & share that thinking with others. We don’t want people who outsource their thinking to established experts or institutions, but rather constantly question how to change the status quo for the better. For many centuries, this has been the realm of philosophy.

"OUR GOAL IS NOT TO CREATE INDIVIDUALS WHO CAN REGURGITATE INFORMATION BUT TO LIBERATE THEM TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES."

Philosophy has always been a catalyst for asking what it means to live a good life, for asking questions that create movements in people and change the world, for expanding the way people think. Philosophy really has been an art of questioning. Tony Robbins says that the quality of your life is equal to the quality of your questions. Once people have knowledge and information, they need to start linking the pieces together to ask bigger questions.

Our hope is that students will ask bigger questions about how they can execute their skills and knowledge now so that the future of humanity is better than its current state. Our hope is that students will continue to ask “Why?” and “What is the meaning of all this?”, not merely accepting others’ values, beliefs, or thoughts at face value. By educating students, we strive to move them into the third phase where they enact and create positive change in the world. As an institution we will support them on their missions, challenge the modern day thinking in the public, and contribute to the philosophy of our time.