A $10K college built from scratch for the AI era

Driving the news: The three nonprofits will announce the Khan TED Institute at TED on Tuesday.

• The interactive online program aims to train students for AI-era jobs while emphasizing human skills like communication and judgment.
• The organizations say the goal is to open for applications in 12 to 18 months and to keep the cost of the program to around $10,000 total.
• The first planned course of study is a bachelor's degree in applied AI.
• Google, Accenture, McKinsey, Bain and Replit are signing on as launch partners.

Zoom in: Organizers say the institute will focus on three areas of learning:

• Core knowledge in math, statistics, economics, computer science, history and writing
• Applied AI skills, including app development, agent building and financial modeling
• Communication and leadership skills strengthened through tutoring, collaborating and public speaking

Between the lines: AI could deliver personalized instruction in ways classroom professors cannot.

• The program promises to allow students to move at their own pace.
• Students will advance through the Institute based on competency, not by how long they've spent in the program.
• Khan Academy founder Sal Khan said that students could complete their degree in three years or less depending on their skills and prior college work.

What they're saying: Khan told Axios that while it's still hard to predict what the jobs of the future will look like, it's pretty clear that students will need a mix of knowledge including traditional subjects, an understanding of AI itself as well as communications skills.

• "When you look at someone's GPA you have no idea if they are good to work with or bad to work with. If they can communicate or not," he said in an interview on the sidelines of the TED Conference on Monday.

Yes, but: Individualized learning has been the promise of ed tech entrepreneurs for decades, but it has yet to deliver lasting improvement at scale.

• Since the launch of ChatGPT three years ago, educators have been working to revamp the classroom and change the way they teach and evaluate students.
• Handwritten blue books have been back for a while, but now that jobs for college grads can be done by AI, the higher education system is still in crisis.

AI has upended education and caused a massive cheating crisis.

• Khan acknowledged this at a recent Common Sense Media conference in San Francisco.
• "Your students are cheating using AI, like all of them are ... your honor codes aren't working," Khan told the audience of educators and administrators.

What we're watching: Whether traditional colleges rethink their models or dismiss this as another ed tech experiment.