HigherEd Series: Sal Khan on What Higher Education Needs to Change in the AI Era

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You can give away, let's call it, give away the knowledge and ways to practice the knowledge. And Khan Academy is not the only player here. You have the MOOCs, you have Coursera, you have TED, you have, there's a lot of good stuff on YouTube. It's a renaissance now in terms of if someone's just a self and AI, of course, now, if you just want to learn something, there's a lot of valuable ways to do it. But one thing that I think a lot about it at Khan Academy now is what is the missing link for someone to have a free world-class education or at least have access to their potential.

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Welcome to the EdTech Insiders Higher Education Series, where we speak with the leaders shaping the future of colleges and universities. Throughout this series, we explore how higher education is evolving, where innovation is happening, and what the sector needs to prepare for what comes next. Thanks for joining us. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Hello, EdTech Insider listeners. We're here with a special guest who probably needs no introduction, but I'll try one. Sal Khan is the founder and CEO of Khan Academy and vision steward and board member of TED, two global nonprofits that provide free education to 200 plus million people worldwide. And today we have Sal on the pod because Sal recently announced the Khan TED Institute, a new higher education program in development with PET and ETS. Sal is the author of The One World Schoolhouse and Brave New Worlds, co-author of Teaching Students to Use AI Ethically and Responsibly. His forthcoming book, Job Shock, examines how AI will transform the future of work and how societies can build learning systems that help people adapt, learn, and thrive. So with that introduction, welcome to the pod, Sal.

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

So before we dive in to the details, can you just tell us a little of the origin story of the content Institute? Where did this idea percolate from and what are you trying to accomplish with it?

Yeah, even before AI entered all of our lives in a massive way four or five years ago, I think most observers of higher education started to say, hey, look, this is getting expensive for a lot of people, not just in terms of tuition, but also opportunity costs. You have the student loan debt