The University of Austin (UATX) differs from other elite universities in several ways. Yet, on many of those dimensions, UATX is similar to other individual schools. The University of Chicago is just as committed to free expression. Caltech is just as dismissive of intercollegiate athletics. UATX’s Polaris Project, on the other hand, is like nothing at any other peer school, at least in its ambition. Since I am a once and future applicant for a faculty position at UATX, I here offer a mild critique and some gentle suggestions.
Critique
The Polaris Project, named for the North Star by which explorers have navigated for centuries, offers a four-year educational through-line that calls on students to build, create, or discover something that serves the human good.
This is a worthy goal; however, the problem is in its implementation. Consider the description of the “Polaris Ideas” course that every UATX student is currently taking.
Where do ideas come from? Is the process similar for practical inventions, like the light bulb, and intellectual and artistic ones, like scientific discoveries, novels, paintings, and music? What are the social and economic preconditions for successful innovations? This seminar explores these questions by engaging with a wide variety of readings.
There is a limited connection, if any, between studying the process of creation and creating something yourself, especially for teenagers. Things don’t get much better with the “Polaris Inspirations” course, which follows:
This course uses case studies and lectures to introduce students to a broad variety of possible Polaris projects and to the basic methods employed in the UATX Academic Centers. Invited speakers lecture about their own Polaris-style projects (e.g., starting a business, founding a newspaper) and students read case studies associated with these lectures. Student deliverables include lecture/case study reviews and journals.
The central problem with these courses, and much of the Polaris Project curriculum, is that there is no substance. Lectures are—mostly—boring. Reviews and journals are—mostly—useless. Students are not actually doing any building, creating, or discovering. They are reading about how other people have done so. Consider the two primary books assigned in Polaris Ideas: How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom by Matt Ridley and Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mikhaly Csikszentmihalyi. ChatGPT provides us with a handy summary of both. Although there is nothing wrong with either book, there is little that will be useful for 18-year-olds trying to create something new.
In that way, UATX is making a mistake similar to that described in the Defence of Duffer’s Drift by Ernest Swinton.
Lieutenant Backsight Forethought—BF to his friends—has been left in command of a 50-man reinforced platoon to hold Duffer’s Drift, the only ford on the Silliassvogel River available to wheeled traffic. Here is his chance for fame and glory. He has passed his officer courses and special qualifications.
‘Now if they had given me a job,’ says BF, ‘like fighting the Battle of Waterloo, or Gettysburg or Bull Run, I knew all about that, as I had crammed it up.’
Swinton highlights the common complaint that junior officers’ training should focus more on applicable knowledge. The same logic applies to the Polaris Project. UATX should prioritize teaching students practical knowledge they can apply immediately.
Suggestions
UATX should look to the start-up world for guidance. The best place to begin is the collected essays of Paul Graham, the legendary co-founder of Y Combinator, which is far and away the most successful start-up accelerator in the world. Y Combinator’s motto, “Make something people want,” provides useful guidance. However, since UATX wants Polaris Projects also to include purely artistic creations and other non-profit endeavors, a more inclusive exhortation might be: Create for others.
“Assume that UATX wants to be for students what Y Combinator is for start-ups.” What follows from that analogy?
First, students should start building on day one. The type of building will vary widely. A student who hopes to create a symphony should make music. An aspiring melitologist should study local bee populations. There is no reason to wait. Every minute spent reading about Elon Musk or Steve Jobs is a minute that would have been better spent moving toward expertise in your chosen area. Graham writes:
When I was trying to think of the things every startup needed to do, I almost included a fourth: get a version 1 out as soon as you can. But I decided not to, because that’s implicit in making something customers want.
You become an expert by working, not by reading about other experts, at least at the start.
Second, students choose their own projects. This is consistent with UATX’s current approach, although the—initial—choice should be made immediately, not after several semesters. Graham encourages students to:
[T]ry working on things you’re interested in. That will get you more information about how interested you are in them, how good you are at them, and how much scope they offer for ambition.
Starter projects might not seem serious enough to outsiders. When I allow students to pick their own projects, the topics generally reflect their own interests, for good or for ill. Graham writes:
Working on a project of your own is as different from ordinary work as skating is from walking. It’s more fun, but also much more productive.
The important thing is to start working, now, on something you care enough about that you will work harder, perhaps harder than you have ever worked before.
Third, students need new skills. The vast majority will come to UATX without a well-defined path. Proto-symphony composers will be few and far between. UATX will need to give students the skills to create a Polaris Project worthy of the name. For most students, the simplest path forward will be to learn how to work with data. Almost anything connected to “human flourishing” will have data associated with it, and almost every organization has more data than it knows what to do with. UATX should teach students how to gather, clean, organize, and visualize data; how to use statistical models to make inferences; and how to display the resulting visualizations and inferences on the web. In just 8 weeks, students could be making something useful.
Fourth, students need mentors. Many experts in topic X would love to collaborate with a student who can work with data, even if that student is only a beginner when it comes to X. UATX rightly emphasizes the importance of mentors but it underestimates how hard it will be to get quality mentors to spend time with students who do not have useful skills. It doesn’t even recommend trying to contact potential mentors until junior year. That is a mistake. The sooner students start working with others, the better. The best way to make that happen is to give students skills which mentors find useful.
The worst sign for the future of Polaris Projects was this commitment to “launching a certificate in entrepreneurship, based on completion of a sequence of elective classes offered through the Polaris Center.” I have never heard a VC claim that such certificates are useful. Graham concurs:
That’s what I’d advise college students to do, rather than trying to learn about ‘entrepreneurship.’ ‘Entrepreneurship’ is something you learn best by doing it. … So if you’re a CS major and you want to start a startup, instead of taking a class on entrepreneurship you’re better off taking a class on, say, genetics. Or better still, go work for a biotech company.
Polaris courses should teach students relevant computer skills and start them on building their own projects immediately. The sooner students can perform useful work on their own, the more interested potential mentors will be in collaborating with them. Build now. Read about “creativity” or “innovation” later, if at all.
Image of The Scarborough Building in Austin, the current home of UATX — Wikipedia
