A Plan To Reinvent University: Mindvalley University

Alan Watts, the great Zen philosopher, once said, no illiterate, inquisitive and imaginative person needs to go to college unless in need of a union card or degree as a certified physician, lawyer or teacher, or unless he requires access to certain heavy and expensive equipment for scientific research. Yet when Watts wrote that in 1972, he couldn't even have imagined what would be happening in the world today with new technologies, rapid change, and shifts in how companies recruit that would all combine to further make college kind of useless. But the thing is, college has numerous good points. We grow up, we mature, we make deep, meaningful connections, we meet the friends and find the interests that ultimately define us. So how can we completely re engineer college to keep all of the good and disrupt all of the bad obsolete points while we think we have an idea? A new model that radically rethinks college, that questions all the rules about how we've been conditioned to believe education should look like and takes advantage of emerging technologies, new social movements, new types of knowledge accessibility, and new research on what truly creates happy, successful, fulfilled lives. Ready to catch a glimpse? Okay, before I reveal this new model, first you gotta know what makes modern college so absurd in the first place. Let's start with the length of time. So you take a teenager and you plant him in a bubble for four years. Same campus surrounded by other 19 year olds. Problem is, in today's world, things are changing at an exponential pace. Peter Diamandis said that between 2016 and 22, there will be as many new changes in the world due to exponential technology growth as between all of 1900 to 2000. Wow. So we have kids coming out of college with knowledge that has become totally obsolete in their four years on campus. So what if we got rid of this four year model? What if instead kids went to college for one month of the year and then spent 11 months in the field, you know, doing real work, like having a job or starting a business. And then they come back for one month every year. What if this did not stop when you're 22? What if it continued? What if this four years were stretched out so. So you come back one month every year for 48 years? Sounds crazy. Hold on. We are just getting started. Second, what if we got rid of expensive campuses? Think about all of that wasted tuition fees. I was stuck on the same campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan for four years, but the world is so much bigger. What if we did away with fixed campuses and instead moved this college to a different city every year? What if we picked international amazing cities like Berlin Singapore, Barcelona. Places filled with culture. Places you dream of visiting. Next. What if we could drop the price by ten fold? No campus means huge cost savings. But now let's look at another odd design about college. They say you are the sum of the five people closest to you. But at college you're hanging out with other 19 year olds. What could you learn from the average 19 year old if you're 19? When I went to college, I remember my freshman year, the coolest guys were the ones that could sneak us into frat parties or buy us liquor. Not exactly brilliant. So what if we disrupted this? What if age did not matter? Your friends could be 19 or 30 or 50. We learn from the wisdom of our elders. They learn from you. Age becomes irrelevant. But then there's the curriculum itself. Neil Gaiman, the legendary writer said of I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing. And you know what I'm talking about. Yes, you get a four year degree, but does it need four years? More and more of the job related aspects of college are free online. Harvard, Berkeley, MIT. Their courses are now online. Just go to edx.org you can learn anything from app development, development to physics for free. Study the classes you need for your chosen career. But why do we waste four years on a fixed campus hanging out with 19 year olds trying to get enough credits to fill some arbitrary degree that we might never ever use? The world is changing so fast. Many of the top jobs today were not available as college degrees a mere five years ago. So what do you teach? You teach what Neil Gaiman preached. Real world skills, how to lead, how to create a vision for your life. How to be a better parent, spouse, lover. How to have healthy self esteem and emotional intelligence. Goal setting, crafting a vision for your life, Entrepreneurship, personal growth skills like how to keep fit and healthy practice, meditation and mindfulness. These are the skills that truly lead to happy successful lives. But you do not learn these in college. Which brings us to the teachers are the best teachers in the world. Today in the world's universities, not always. And here's why. Teachers today have their hands tied more than ever. To survive as a teacher in a classical system, you are often rewarded for the research much, much more than your actual teachings. So as a student, you don't always get the best learning experience. Books offered are quite dry and classes not too engaging, leading you to disconnect and not truly retain the knowledge you've been given. Those who have a true passion for teaching find themselves gravitating to out of the traditional system. The very best teachers are the ones writing best selling books, building their businesses, speaking at large seminars, speaking on the TED stage. They have transcended the need to be stuck on a singular campus. Colleges may have great researchers and scientists, but not necessarily the best teachers. So what if you could learn from these people? What if your teacher was someone whose work was so profound he had sold 20 million books? Or broken a Guinness record? Or was the New York Times best selling author the best? India feels so, let's recap. No more four years. It's now one month a year. No fixed campus. You move to a different spectacular city every year. No fixed age. Your peers come from all around the world and are of all ages. No outdated curriculums. You learn the skills that actually matter to happiness and success in making an impact on the planet. And your teachers are the best in the world. But wait, despite all of this, college does have some good bits. You meet some of your best friends in the world. You form your character, find your community and create incredible memories. So what if we can retain and amplify these good parts and disrupt and reinvent all the obsolete parts? What would education look like then? We think we have an idea. Welcome to MindValleyU. First you don't come to this for four years. You come for a month. And then you go back into the regular world. Now about the campus. Rather than have a regular campus, we pick some of the most exciting, exhilarating cities in the world. For 2017, it's Barcelona. Hundreds of students are coming to Barcelona in June to join this new type of education model. Next age, it doesn't matter if you're 17 or 70. Everyone moves to the city together. Using Airbnb and other tools, we make the city our living space, our playground. The community works together in shared co working spaces, form their own networking groups and attend exciting new classes together. And now about those classes. These are no ordinary trainings and certainly no ordinary teachers. Imagine a faculty that consists of some of the greatest minds in human development. For this upcoming beta project in Barcelona, you might take a class from the likes of Neil Donald Walsh, who wrote the best selling book series Conversations with God, which sold 20 million copies. Or learn from Eric Edmeads, who trains people on the art of masterful communication, one of the key skills that will help you ascend your career. Or study with Wim Hof, who holds over a dozen Guinness records and can teach you how to hone your mind and body to superhuman levels. Or study with some of the world's top entrepreneurship and personal growth programs like Lifebook, or Learn to Hack youk Mind with Marisa Peer, the hypnotherapist who works with a list celebs and Olympians. Or learn mindfulness from Gaylan Philipton, who trained the actors of Doctor Strange on Eastern philosophy. But it's more than just classes. Throughout the month we organize meetups, masterminds, networking groups, volunteer opportunities, or to allow these students here to connect and bond and forge great friendships. After all, a Harvard study said that the single greatest determinant of your happiness in life is going to be the strength of your social connections. With the social opportunities we create and the fact that you can return every year for the rest of your life to plug in, grow and reconnect, you'll never feel lonely again. You found your tribe. And about that tribe it's not just young people. It's all ages. It's utter rubbish that we designed a society where we think you're meant to see the end to your college life by 23. On our campus, you meet people of all ages, even families attending with their kids, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teenagers and people in their 50s and beyond, all connecting, learning and being part of one international tribe, a curated community of people bound together by a desire to grow, to connect and craft epic lives. This is mindvalleyu and our first city campus is in Barcelona. It's happening this June 2017. Stop by for a month or a week or just attend a specific lecture. But know that no matter what you choose, you're participating in an experiment to redefine education. In the past decade, we've reinvented the phone, the car, the tv. Now it's time to reinvent how we learn. So you can choose to live an ordinary life. Same city, same job, same style of parenting and relationships and daily 9 to 5 as everyone else. Or you can choose to question everything. Welcome to a new style of education and a new style of living. All the information you need to know is below or above. Frankly, I don't know where you're seeing this video, but click on the link to get to our page with more information and to apply or get on the waitlist. Thank you.