Our University Does Not Require Books, Paper, or Human Knowledge

Welcome to the university of the future. Our new digital-forward brand of education requires no books, no paper, and, best of all, no human knowledge. The customers—I mean, Young Learning Partners—simply pay their tuition and begin their virtual journey: two entire weeks’ worth of videos and click-through modules.

The university of the future is like the old one, just without all those dusty tomes lying about. And also without the knowledge contained within the tomes. We thought about uploading some of that knowledge to the cloud, but then we’d have to pay for the extra storage, and you know how expensive that can be.

Now Young Learning Partners don’t have to worry about late nights in the library, because there is no library. Yes, centuries of knowledge have been erased, but on the bright side, no more paper cuts. Think of short-form video as a pain-free substitute for book learning.

This is a paradigm shift. It’s like Plato’s cave. You sit in a dark room, watch images projected on a screen, and then stay there and enjoy more images. That’s what Plato’s cave is all about. At least, that’s what I’ve gathered from the modules. I’d ask a philosopher, but we dissolved the philosophy department months ago.

Our alums can step into the world ready for the future, diploma in hand. Not a paper diploma, of course. It’s a non-fungible token connected to the blockchain that demands donations the second a kid graduates. In truth, it’s more like a ransom notice than a diploma, but at least you don’t have to pay to get it framed.

At our core, we are still a liberal arts institution. Our pedagogy is rooted in the trivium and the quadrivium, Latin words with meanings we could only know if we still had a classics department. We do, however, have free Wi-Fi thanks to our sponsorship with Palantir. Is Palantir a Latin name? It probably translates to “cool and good and not evil.” Alas, there is no way to know for sure.

Such a radical shakeup in learning has never happened before, as far as I know. Is there even a way to learn about whether or not something has happened before? A method or tradition for studying prior events? No, that’s impossible. That’s not in the modules.

After years of the same old educational model, it’s time to turn the page. Well, not literally, but we can swipe boldly into the future with our fat little thumbs.

And before you ask, we kept the business school, obviously. We’re ditching knowledge, not money.