thanks imagine a global classroom built by one man. he got his start tutoring his cousin. he posted tutorials on youtube that became so popular, he made it his life work. millionsacademy serves of students, teaching everything from chemistry to computer programming from kindergarten to calculus. the best part, it is all free. today, khan academy

founder and reinvent her sal khan. you grew up in louisiana. you weren't wealthy or privileged. you had free school lunches. raised me and my sister. i never met my dad. she raised us as a single mother my entire childhood. she had odd jobs, from managing a convenience store, at one point she collected change from vending machines. emily: you went to public high school? people headed to a four-year college. some people were right out of j uvie. a group of kids was headed to college, as well. emily: what did you want to be when you grew up? i wasn high school, enamored with theoretical

physics. this science is trying to understand the nature of reality. how cool is that? emily: you also learn how to code. sal: we didn't have a computer, but i got my hands on a programmable calculator. i learned even on a calculator, i became obsessed with that. with code, you can create reality. that was captivating to me. emily: you went to m.i.t.. sal: my high school guidance counselor said, where are you applying to? i said, m.i.t. she said, no one has gone to m.i.t. from our high school. emily: after that, how did you end up at a hedge fund? a startup for two years. like everyone in 1999, i was plotting my retirement at age 25. .hen, nasdaq collapse i thought, ok. maybe i should rethink the

future after getting dinged at 40 interviews. i found a place with a guy who was an incredible mentor and boss. emily: while at a hedge fund, you too dirtier cousin on the side. how did that work? your cousin on the side. how did that work? with algebra. i got her ahead of her class. i became a tiger cousin. i called her school, and i said, i think she should retake the exam from last year. a couple years later, she was taking oculus at the university of new orleans. there was something here. how many other kids think they are not good at math but need an intervention and they could run? emily: how did you post the tutorials on youtube? sal: we're got around my family. i started working with 10 or 15

cousins around the country. i wrote them practice software. a tool for me as their teacher to keep track of what they were doing. one of my friends said, why don't you make some of them as youtube videos and upload them? i said, that is a horrible idea. youtube is for cats playing p&l. not map. but i get older -- i got over the idea. i thought the videos would only be for my cousin, but it was not long before people were watching. momenttell me about the when he said, there is a problem i consult. maybe this could be my full-time job. maybe this can be my mission. days, when i early asked my cousin for feedback, and they said they liked me better on youtube than in person, they liked having no judgment if they had to review something in fourth grade if they were in ninth grade. if they were stuck, they did not

have to call me. it was on demand. when i got letters from people on youtube, the initial ones were thank you's. then the comments, this is the reason why i was able to pass algebra. after i left the military, i majored in engineering. this is why my children are able to engage with their math class. it was 2008, i set it up as a not-for-profit. by 2009, this is all i thought about. my wife and i set down and figured out, let's give it a shot. it feels like this could be a real organization. i quit my job, to see if we can do it for real. emily: was it scary? sal: yes. our first thought -- our first daughter had just been born. we dug into our savings. a delusionallye optimistic mindset. it was the most stressful time of my life. you question your self-worth. what do you do for a living?

youtube videos. it, wer 10 months into got our first major donation e-mailed immediately the donor and said, thank you. this is so generous. were a physical school, you would have a building named after you. she said, i love what you are doing. we met and talked and she said, you have made progress, but how are you supporting yourself? i said, i am not. she said, you need to. i wired you $100,000. that was a good day. that is what allowed me to say, i can really do this. emily: it is still all free. sal: a free world-class education. that is core to who we are. we have had support from google, the gates foundation and others. , wes not just me anymore have 80 employees and volunteers

. it is a larger effort. emily: bill gates, reed hastings, google is on board. how do you get those people to support you? sal: lots of those people found themselves using khan academy or the used it with their children. they felt the benefit directly. emily: your model is, no employee equity. sal: everyone gets the same stock package as i do. there is not going to be an ipo. emily: do you worry about making ends meet? sal: in some ways, we are a high-growth tech thing reaching hundreds of millions of people. in other ways, we are a nonprofit competing for the top people with google and facebook and dropbox, all these hot companies. but we are not able to give the stock packages. if you give them a good salary,

a good mission, intellectually challenging work, then give them great people to work around, it feeds on itself. i feel good about it although it is a strange model. emily: i know you have three kids now. sal: i pinch myself every morning. this is what i love doing in life. we can buy a honda accord every eight years. that is all i need as long as i can pursue my passion. we can dream about how it can be in the future, are we creating the next harvard or oxford? could reach a billion students per year. i can't imagine being in a luckier position. emily: you are hanging out with billionaires and you are on the same lists as mark zuckerberg. how do you feel you fit in as an entrepreneur, yet? i was the poorest person on the cover of forbes. what is needed about silicon -- meet about silicon valley, it's

not about the wealth. caree in silicon valley about, what you are doing to innovate. what is the thing you are doing that will change the world? that is silicon valley, silicon valley. emily: what is the myth and the reality? sal: i am still changing diapers. is,ink the other myth sometimes it looks like these things just happen overnight. i don't think i am speaking just for aself, i am speaking lot of people who started things. you hear about the success, but there are a string of failures that get swept under the rug. academyying to get khan funded and i got dinged by 40 organizations. it is never as clean as it looks. emily: do you think videos can replace learning in a classroom?

emily: you still create most of

the videos? sal: i create a large number of videos. that is one of the things that keeps me happy. emily: how many have you made personal? around 4000. we have been investing in an extension of the software i started with my cousins in 2005, where students can learn at their own pace, it understands what they know and don't know, partnering with colleges to be test prep for the sat. by some measure, khan academy is one of the largest schools in the world. it is a huge responsibility. you can imagine a king -- a can around the world who gets access to a phone or tablet that will be everywhere. einstein, how many did we not find? how many of them got squandered because they did not learn to read or get an education?

imagine if we can increase by a of 10, thea factor einstein's in the world, the cancer researchers, the number of people that could think about alternative energy? it's exciting. emily: can videos replace learning in a classroom? sal: if lorena classroom is about information dissemination, videos can do that. it is more bite sized, on demand. that does not mean that the physical classroom goes away. it is an opportunity to allow the physical classroom to move up the value change. if students can get information and practice in their own time and pace, the classroom can be used or real human interaction. emily: critics say the videos can be repetitive. last person to force videos on anybody. i think the videos are the least important part of the educational experience.

if you need an explanation, it is great to be able to look it up. the real learning will happen when you engage in and exercises. when you go into a classroom, having dialogue, doing projects, getting feedback from your peers. human andr can be the the child's life and sit next to them, get to know them better, figure out not just where the gaps are, but what are their emotional needs? there is a body of research that if you have a growth mindset, your brain is trainable. if you put -- if you push yourself, you can make yourself smarter. have set up a classroom at the khan academy where you are testing lots of different things. sal: is always been a dream. even before khan academy existed, wouldn't it be fun to and mini dumbledore experiment with these ideas? we should have a small laboratory worry contest the ideas. we can test the ideas around,

what could a classroom be? emily: how many kids? my eldest son is one of the guinea pigs. lots of the kids are khan academy employees's kids. there is that, and we just started so there are a handful of families letting us experiment on their children. emily: you think online -- do youwill replace think online education will replace the classroom? ♪

emily: the u.s. spends more than any country in the world on education, $1.33 trillion per year. we are 25th in math, 17th in science. what's wrong? sal: 50 years ago, if you said, give me a list of the 10 most innovative companies in the world, maybe 30% would've been american. if you did that now, 80% would be american. i like to think about, how can we bring that spirit of

entrepreneurship, that spirit of failure not being stigmatized, into the schools? the future does not need to be your gpa and test scores. it can bp or feedback and a portfolio. being a designer is creative. only: the u.s. is the developed country with a high percentage of top and bottom performers. we are in the heart of innovation and the public schools in san francisco aren't good at all. what is the problem? why is that? we: we live in a world that don't fix something, we will have a smaller percentage of people able to participate in the innovation and the wealth creation. we lose our most creative potential engineers and mathematicians based on how we evaluate them in middle school. you can solve an exponent when you are 14, we don't think you could be a doctor or an engineer. emily: that is so early on. sal: looking at a 12-year-old

and saying, you can't mix paint, you can't be a painter. think online education will replace traditional education and the traditional classroom in the future? sal: not at all. buber -- i will my own children use khan academy to use at their own pace, but i hope they go to a classroom or they can interact with teachers, have a conversation, not be told to sit still but to around. not told to be quiet, told to discuss and create. emily: in the future, will people still be paying thousands of dollars for an m.i.t. or harvard degree? are -- oneturn investment unless you major in a lucrative field is suspect. if you extrapolate the growth

intuition, 10-20 years, you are looking at -- emily: we started planning for my kids education. half $1 million for education is not feasible. over the next decade, online could be part of it. there will be other past. i do want colleges to go away. there will be economic discipline that forces them -- i do not want colleges to go away. there will be economic discipline that forces them to lower costs. there are not obvious tools at their disposal to drive tuition down yet. i think as there are other options people can do that might have different economic models, i think that will naturally put pressure -- this has nothing to do with online. you have people like general assembly and coding schools, where they accept students and don't take tuition. iny train them for one year

something society needs, designers or whatever, and then they say, it will be like a recruiting model. we will take 20% of your first year's salary. placed andng to get make six figures, i have a good income. i don't have all the answers, but there are a lot of interesting catalyst that will change things. emily: is there a government solution? sal: there is no equivalent for a college degree. if people say, you can prove to us and you have the same set of skills is a college graduate, we will give you a credential or a signal to society that you are employable along these dimensions at a high level. this would be something that someone who graduates from m.i.t. or stanford want to do. this would be a catalyst they could cut -- that could put positive pressure on education

costs. most parents and students think, we are paying for a credential. but when universities get resources, it goes into the campus, the landscaping. decouple the credential from the learning, it allows everyone to compete on the learning side on he will footing and allows innovation to happen. it allows everyone to kind of aspire for credentials that have equal weight. i am just a dreaming right now. that could be a powerful way to level the playing field. lean: if trying hard can -- lead to better learning, does that mean anyone could be mark zuckerberg? or is there something innate about great entrepreneurs that can't be learned? sal: i don't know the absolute statement. i think most people are capable of mastering calculus and programming a computer and

understanding genetics or quantum physics. i believe that. went 400le, if you years back to western europe, roughly 20% of men and 10% of women could read. emily: can anyone start a facebook or a khan academy? zuckerberg, shift his year forward a year, he might have been an engineer. orft my life a year forward back, if i grew up in india, you don't know what your path would have been. it is a combination of, they have a growth mindset and they push themselves to grow and learn new things. but they also had lots of opportunity. it were in the right place at the right time. -- they were in the right place at the right time. a little dose of locke never hurt. mike -- mark zuckerberg would've been successful the matter what.

i don't think everybody could be him, that i think there are a lot of people who could be mark zuckerberg who think they can't. emily: what does the classroom look like 50 years from now? sal: kids are able to create things that 10 or 20 years ago, you needed an engineering degree to build. schools will become maker spaces. emily: what about you? sal: i hope to be doing this until the day i'd i, which is hopefully not for another 50 years. if i imagine a world in 500 years, i hope khan academy is still around. billions ofeach students and empowering billions of people, so everything, when i go to bed, i think, what needs to be done? what is at stake? i hope i keep making videos, too. emily: thank you so much for

joining us. ♪

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