Imagining a 2040 Without Schools

Hello weirdo friends,

I need you to be my listener and brainstorm buddy today. My founder friend told me to start by writing my vision on a slide deck, but I need help to do so. None of the ideas feels good enough. Or maybe it’s my vision that isn’t clear enough.

I’ve gradually realized that I’ve hated all the existing and new education and products even the new AI technology is blooming. But what do I want?

I hope I can use this post to explore and listen to your ideas and brainstorm.

What do I dislike about the existing education system?

A major flaw in the current education system is its failure to recognize the critical importance of experiential learning. We spend years studying subjects that others deem essential for our future, but much of what we learn often feels disconnected from the real world. Even when the content is valuable, students struggle to engage deeply with it because they haven’t encountered real-world problems that demand such knowledge. Without practical experience or a clear connection to real-life challenges, students lack the motivation to fully invest in mastering difficult subjects.

For example, during business school, I was buried in case studies, multiple-choice questions, and marketing theories long before applying any of it. But what if we experienced these scenarios first, and then learned the concepts? It’s like someone talking endlessly about relationship advice without ever having been in one. Experience should come first, and teaching should grow naturally from that experience.

What do I dislike about existing education products?

Many existing education products offer only incremental improvements rather than the transformative changes we need. They focus on optimizing tasks like grading, exam preparation, and lesson delivery — essentially improving the mechanics of a flawed system. But in the year 2030, should we still rely on the traditional concepts of teaching, grading, and exams? These products perpetuate an outdated model rather than challenge the fundamental assumptions of how learning should happen. The question we should be asking is not how to make incremental improvements, but whether these structures should exist at all in the future.

The Purpose of Education

My friend and I have identified three foundational pillars that education should cultivate:

1. Values: Instilling a strong ethical compass and guiding principles that shape decision-making and behavior.
2. Abilities: Developing cognitive frameworks, such as learning how to approach new tasks — like acquiring a language or solving complex problems.
3. Skills: Building specific proficiencies, such as fluency in languages like German, Spanish, and English, or mastering technical disciplines.

To invent the future, we need to have a clear vision of what that future looks like. For instance, what should education in 2040 aim to achieve? When I try to imagine the kind of company or product I want to build, I realize I’m confined by the present. If we want to create something groundbreaking, we have to start by imagining society in 2040.

Critical Questions for Education’s Future

• What will technology look like in 2040? Will we live in a fully immersive digital world, perhaps the metaverse?
• What skills will be needed? Will memorizing information still be relevant when AI can retrieve and process knowledge instantly?
• Will traditional school structures — elementary, middle, and high school — still exist? Or will these rigid distinctions become irrelevant in a world where learning is continuous and adaptive?
• Will subjects still matter as we know them? Could we move away from predefined disciplines and focus instead on solving real-world problems?

As I ponder these questions, it becomes clear that we are currently underestimating the extent to which education must evolve. The goal of education shouldn’t be to simply improve existing systems, but to rethink them from the ground up. If our future remains tethered to traditional concepts, we will fall behind.

Foundational Assumptions About the Future

1. Rapid Societal Change Will Demand Faster Learning Cycles
   The pace of technological and societal change will be so fast that traditional, multi-year education programs will be too slow. By the time students graduate, much of what they learned may be outdated. This means that education must become more agile, with quicker feedback loops between learning and application. Students must be able to pivot and adapt continuously, based on real-world changes.
2. Technology Will Redefine the Core of Education
   Technology, especially AI, will dramatically reshape what is considered essential knowledge. For instance, AI tools like ChatGPT have already diminished the importance of memorizing facts and publicly available information. As a society, we’ve long considered knowledge retention to be a core indicator of intelligence. But in a future where AI can instantly retrieve and apply this knowledge, memorization will become irrelevant. Instead, collaboration, creativity, and problem-solving will become the cornerstones of education.
3. By 2040, if machines take on many routine tasks, the skills we’ll need will shift dramatically:

• Collaboration: Not just with people, but with machines. Learning how to work harmoniously with AI and other advanced systems will be crucial, as will the ability to keep pace with technological advancements across different sectors.
• Control: Mastery over one’s habits, especially regarding technology (e.g., self-control in the age of social media), will be increasingly valuable. Ethical considerations and responsible use of technology will become as critical as technical knowledge.
• Communication: Advances in AI will change how we interact with machines and with each other. With so much more information at our disposal, communication will need to evolve to handle greater complexity, nuance, and the exchange of ideas.
• Invention: The ease of turning ideas into reality will make creativity and innovation central to success. For example, AI might enable individuals to create new products, companies, or systems without traditional expertise in engineering, marketing, or design. The emphasis will shift from rigid qualifications (such as working on C++ for 5 years) to the ability to ideate and execute effectively on specific problems. Good ideas will matter.

What Should Education in 2040 Look Like?

Problem-Centric Learning, Not Institution-Centric Learning

By 2040, formal schools as we know them today will likely be obsolete. Schools were created to bridge a skills gap between people and the workforce, but now they often perpetuate outdated models that no longer address the real challenges of society. Schools project prestige through branding, but they often fail to equip students with practical, relevant skills.

Project-based learning models exist today, but they are often theoretical or based on small-scale “toy” projects. In the future, the focus must be on real-world problem-solving from day one. With the accelerating pace of technological development, students will have the tools to build and test actual products, not just propose hypothetical solutions. This shift would create an education system based on direct experience and feedback.

Instead of having fixed institutions, I imagine a dynamic, problem-solving network that partners with companies, NGOs, and government organizations. Students would rotate through different real-world challenges before deciding what they want to focus on. Education would be deeply embedded within problem-solving institutions, allowing for continuous learning and practical application.

Instead of having a school, I’m imagining a wild problem rotation program for people before they decide on something they want to solve. The function of a school will be merged into entities like Uber x Waterloo University, and Startup Incubator x Minerva University. These “schools” wouldn’t exist as independent entities anymore but as collaborative spaces for learning, sponsored by governments, companies, and learner contributions. For simplicity, I’ll still refer to them as schools to help illustrate the idea.

Imagine a “school” building next to the Uber office. Students would take classes on real problems Uber is facing, learning theories from fields like computer science, economics, and data science. Then, they would spend six months working directly at Uber, applying what they’ve learned to real challenges. Afterward, they could either continue taking classes related to the problems they encountered or rotate to another problem area, depending on their interests.

To make the idea even clearer, imagine you want to become a Wall Street financial analyst. You would live alongside professionals in that field, observing their daily routines, how they dress, and how they network. This immersive experience would give you a firsthand understanding of the lifestyle and culture, helping you quickly determine if it’s the right fit for you.

Implementation of ideas throughout the process will be encouraged, either through the support of those entities, or “the school” will assist the experiments through personal launch due to the possibility of technical advancement.

What would students learn in these schools? While implementing solutions focuses on details, schools would extract lessons from the challenges faced during implementation and provide guidance. For example, working on Uber’s real-time data streaming platform might teach students both the technical challenges of real-time architecture and the economic principles of supply and demand fluctuations.

As for community and relationships, these would still form through cohort-based learning models. The difference is that segregation would no longer be based on age but on passion and shared interests.

Education should help students discover not only their interests but also their values, life goals, and desires. Through real-world problem testing, students will learn what truly matters to them — whether it’s money, stability, the problem itself, or the vision behind it. This would reduce the frustration of spending years in traditional schools only to find out after graduating that a chosen career path isn’t the right fit.

Currently, education only allows us to peek at problems through reading or classroom discussions, but in 2040, we will be able to engage with real problems, deploy solutions, and receive immediate feedback from society or experts within problem-solving institutes.

The interaction between college professors who’ve never faced real problems and students who lack experience won’t be enough. Problems create pain, and pain drives motivation and learning. Young adults don’t want to be treated like children — they want to explore and contribute. With the right playground for experimentation and guidance, students will no longer be passive learners — they will be active creators, contributing meaningfully to society from day one.

Well, this is a new idea produced in my brain today. I’m curious about what you think!