Brandon's Profile

Cool post Sam, I think the potential impact MOOCs can have on the world is incredible if they can solve the accreditation problem. Its wild to me that there hasn’t been more movement trying to solve accreditation since anybody in the world can have access to a top tier education at MIT (they provide all of their courses online for free). I am curious if the primary motivation for a lack of movement towards solve accreditation is because educational institutions want to protect their revenue streams. I don’t think going the route of specializations or certificates of completion will replace the value of a degree any time soon. I’m sure you are probably aware of it, but check out The Khan Academy if you’re not. Salman Khan (HBS grad) is doing incredible things with education, but he is less concerned with college level education. I think it would be interesting to develop MOOCs for lesser levels of education as substitutes for attending elementary, middle, and high school.

Thanks for posting this Lauren. I am curious as to whether the company is more of a fad and if it has the legs to keep growing. The retail space is probably not cheap and I’m curious how sustainable of a model it will end up being. It definitely is a cool concept and it sounds like an amusement park for Italian food.

Love the write up Will and I thought I’d hop on the hate train and leave a comment. Its unbelievable that Amtrak is able to do what it does. What a waste of the taxpayers money on an outdated technology that lags behind every mode of transportation today. I see it as a classic case of corruption in the US government, where Congressmen are too afraid to put a stop to a program that loses money so long as it provides jobs in a district. I think it will be interesting to see how the two companies working on developing the Hyperloop will affect the US rail system in the coming years. Hopefully, they put Amtrak in the grave.