“People don't have the right training. If you say you want to automate cars and save people's lives, the skills you need for that aren't taught in any particular discipline”.
“So I understand how to build computers, how to make software. I've learned on my own a lot of other things. If you look at the people who have high impact, they have pretty general knowledge. They don't have a really narrowly focused education.”
--Larry Page, Co-Founder, Google, on “How to change the world”.
Society faces new, multidisciplinary research challenges. Creating artificial intelligence, curing cancer, and combating global warming are all examples of important 21st century grand challenges that are being addressed using techniques that cross disciplinary boundaries. Moreover, the increased prevalence of technology has necessitated new problem-solving approaches that may change rapidly with further technological growth. Finally, the growth of new theoretical disciplines, such as data mining, has made available general problem-solving tools that may be applied in conjunction with domain expertise to solve specific problems in any domain.
These challenges are currently met through collaboration of individual specialists (“domain experts”). However, assembling a team of specialists carries its own problems: the complexity of communication grows exponentially with the size of the team (causing the team to work at suboptimal efficiency through introduction of “slack time” due to communication), costs increase (and thus it becomes more difficult to procure funding), travel becomes an issue, vast differences in expertise prevent synergies from forming and ensure that no member of the team understands the complete nature of what the team is doing, and different problem-solving approaches lead to confusion and discohesiveness. In short, it becomes far more difficult to get work done.
We believe that these challenges can be solved more efficiently by broadening the knowledge of the individual members of the team, ensuring that smaller teams, or perhaps even single individuals, are all that are necessary to perform the same work. This ensures that everyone understands the complete nature of the work they are doing while reducing the complexity (and thus costs and required resources) of keeping the team functioning as a productive unit. We believe this can be accomplished while retaining the same level of depth.
The benefits of a polymathic approach do not stop there, however: individuals that train without boundaries gain the insight to fuse principles from different disciplines, greatly expanding the range of ideas they are capable of expressing (consequently, they become more creative). Furthermore, through utilizing different artistic and scientific approaches, they gain an appreciation for the fundamental Beauty lying at the roots of both their study and their own individual forms of expression. Finally, approaching problems broadly forces one to abstract the problem-solving methods being used to their bare bones in order to compare them and decide which to use, resulting in an extremely powerful understanding of the nature and purpose of systems. Such an understanding can be applied in any field, including the critique, management, and ultimate improvement of human systems. Thus, a general approach is very suited for the next generation of leaders.
In short, by taking a general approach, one obtains a level of understanding far greater than one could gain by studying a subject in isolation.
We wish to impart such generality on a large scale, helping society reap all of these benefits. We believe that this would cause a profound paradigm-shift not only in education, but rippling through every field of human endeavor.
“To have a great idea, have a lot of them.”
--Thomas Edison
We envision Polymath University, a university where students are taught to creatively fuse several areas of study from the very start of their training. Rather than focusing on rote memorization or intense study on a single area, this university would provide highly individual combinations of depth-driven and integrative approaches to students. Because students will be specifically taught to intuitively connect methods from one field with others in their integration classes or seminars, we believe that such an approach can yield the equivalent of traditional degrees in a student's chosen fields in roughly the same time a traditional university would require to yield a single specialized degree. These subjects may be prioritized or given equal weight, according to each student's individualized goals.
Moreover, we envision a modular university that further accelerates learning by eliminating redundancies in training and encouraging autodidacticism (self-directed learning), allowing students to fulfill all credit requirements by their choice of examination-based waiver, coursework, independent projects or theses, independent or group research, or industrial activities such as internships. We wish to avoid holding students to canned career or life expectations, preferring to give them the tools required for them to pursue their own unique life goals, so which method a student chooses to fulfill this requirement is his or her choice. Coursework would be evaluated in a Montessori-style system, in which students can elect to “graduate” one course and enroll in another at any time during a semester, not just at a semester boundary (note that this would still require an examination and/or recommendation by the faculty). For students performing research, “research groups” could just as easily be composed of groups of interested students working towards new understanding as faculty working towards their own projects. We do not wish to bind the students to the interests of the professors, nor involve them in the vicious cycle of “publish or perish”, but to let them freely pursue their own individual ideas and interests. In all cases, comparable skillsets and proficiency must be demonstrated by the students and approved by the faculty for students to advance through the program. Students' curricula would be highly customizable and problem or goal-oriented rather than subject-oriented.
Following the completion of all requirements, which would be based on proficiency milestones, students would be required to demonstrate proficiency equal to that of a comparable degree recipient in a traditional university in at least one of their subjects. However, this is merely a minimum, and students may (and hopefully will) earn qualifications in other subjects as well by demonstrating the respective proficiency requirements. Moreover, prior to graduation, students must demonstrate the ability to apply concepts from one field to others and derive foundational principles from their various fields of study. How proficiency is measured, like most of our measures, will be flexible: examinations, coursework, theses, or other culminating events could be used. To recognize this accomplishment, students would receive degrees such as a “Bachelor of Arts and Sciences” or “Master of Arts and Sciences”, recognizing their culminating levels of attainment in all of their chosen subjects, rather than individual subject-based degrees, although the very concept of a degree is only a secondary testimony to the underlying education that the degree represents (though an important one for students); thus our vision is flexible on this point, and we are content to give out traditional BA/BS/MA/MS/Ph. D. degrees if doing otherwise would be problematic.
Because curricula would be problem and goal-oriented, spanning diverse subjects, and chosen primarily by students in accordance with their own goals, and because performance would be measured by proficiency rather than completion of a set number of credits, graduates of such a university would emerge highly versatile, with the insight, confidence, and experience required to pursue not only the challenges that society will set before them, but their own private visions of how the world should be. In fact, because students tailor their own experiences and can easily change fields without losing time due to our proficiency-oriented measure of progress and our goal-directed curriculum, they will have already exercised a great deal of personal choice, ensuring that their values are fully developed and their ultimate visions are well-defined and inline with their training. In short, they would satisfy the criteria for personal advancement set forth in Maslow's concept of self-actualization or Dabrowski's positive disintegration. Polymath graduates would not only be well-versed, but further along in their human development and realization of their potential.
Finally, students would be creators, adding to their societies even before graduating. The very environment of the university would thus be conducive to the act of creation. We envision a university where student-created art adorns vibrantly-lit halls, student-created ambient music fills certain comfortable and well-furnished common areas (with other areas left silent for those who desire the solitude of their own thoughts), and spacious areas of untrammeled natural beauty for students to explore ring the campus. Students who need to study would find ample facilities to do so, while students who do not would find many opportunities to refine their own thoughts on nature walks or other activities - we realize that the majority of new ideas emerge outside of a formal study setting and that they are generated most efficiently when the mind is otherwise at peace. Exercise of students' natural curiosity would be promoted through planned facilities such as a comfortable and extensive library (with amenities resembling most large bookstores, such as couches and a coffee shop) and “The Polymath Museum of Art and Science” (as finances permit). Such facilities are able to move even laypeople who have no stake at the forefront of knowledge, and we believe that they would provide an incomparable source of ideas and motivation for our students. It should be emphasized that, like Einstein, we would greatly prefer students to think and create for themselves over simply reading and absorbing the thoughts of others.
Unlike most universities, who revoke nearly all affiliations with their alumni, our students' educations would not stop at graduation. Learning never stops, and there is no reason to deny an education to one who could benefit from it. Therefore, Polymath graduates (and possibly others) would be entitled and encouraged to sit in on as many courses given at the university as they wish to, for free and for the rest of their lives (space in the course permitting, of course). We believe that this policy alone will significantly improve literacy, progress, interest in learning, and overall quality of life, especially if it is also adopted by other institutions in response.
Polymath would be a new type of university - the first to live up to its name and grant a fully universal education to its students. We ultimately hope that by graduating an unprecedented number of interdisciplinary leaders, we will usher in a wave of artistic and scientific advances culminating in a second Renaissance.