Michael Saylor created Saylor Academy after struggling financially at MIT. The free platform has reached 850,000 students and adds 80,000 to 90,000 each quarter. Within 12 to 24 months, it will become Saylor University, awarding its own accredited degrees.
Because when I went to MIT, you know, it impoverished my family. You know, we pretty much burned through our life savings in the first 4 weeks I was in college. And I thought, why don't we just give people a computer science degree or a physics degree or a chemistry degree via online website method? So we created the Saylor Academy and we paid professors to create courses and we We put textbooks in the open source domain or in the Creative Commons domain so they're free for everybody. And we just give it to the world. I think we've had about 850,000 students so far. We add about 80,000 students every quarter, maybe 90,000. And, you know, it's a simple idea. It's just make education free for everybody forever.
Oh man, I would hug you. I don't know if you'd accept the hug, but I would hug you. I, I want to understand, with— in this regard, do you get a degree?
Yeah, right now we have cross-accreditation, so you get the degree from another, another college that accepts our credits. But in the next 12 to 24 months, we're going to convert into— and from a Sailor Academy to Sailor University, and then we'll issue an our own degree. That takes, uh, it takes a little bit of effort. You have to go through a lot of, uh, a lot of regulatory filings. We had that, uh, we added a librarian to our staff because librarians are required in order to be accredited as a university. So we keep doing—
well, you'll also, you'll definitely need a dean of diversity.
All sorts of interesting Interesting requirements. But the short of it is right now, you know, we give everybody the courses, the certifications, and the credits through a whole network of affiliated colleges and universities. And very shortly we'll be our own university.
And you want to maintain this as free?
Yeah, the whole idea, it's a, it's a nonprofit charity and I don't have any heirs, so when I die, all my assets pretty much go to this foundation that funds this, this online university. And the idea, the big idea is, is anybody ought to be able to get a computer science degree or a physics degree or history or whatever degree for not even a nickel, for zero, just completely. Because who are you trying to run it for profit?
Yeah, no, no, I think it's awesome.
Uh, uh, Just the charity.
Why theoretically would this not end physical universities?
Um, you know, I think that the world can't— what are we going to see? We're back to that Steinway grand piano example. Rich people and affluent people have pianos and they have books in their library and they have beautiful things, you know, sculptures, and they have gold jewelry and they have the like. It That doesn't go away when you invent Spotify, and the iPad, and Google, you know, and iBooks. What's going on is we're just expanding the pyramid to people in the world that just can't afford to spend $200,000 on a graduate degree. I think that people that can, that come from affluent families, are gonna keep going to MIT, and Harvard, and Stanford, and to whatever. I mean, the university has 3 components, right? There's the country club component. I want to send my kids to a really beautiful campus where they're going to be able to do sports and meet other people. And there's nothing wrong with that. And then there's the education component. They're going to learn something. And that you can learn something online by streaming video and computer much better for about a— you can't learn ballet or golf maybe, or having physical things, but, but computer science, you can definitely learn online without a lot of people find out information about your academy. Sailor.org. S-A-I-L-O-R dot org. It's just right there. It's free.
I hope we speak again. I think that this is incredibly important what you're doing.
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, we welcome everybody. Anybody can come. So if anybody wants more information on Sailor Academy, go to sailor.org. If you want information on Bitcoin, go to Hope. H-O-P-E. Bitcoin is hope. We've dedicated that domain to information on Bitcoin.
Excellent. Thank you again so much. Michael Saylor, it's a visionary.
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