[jbellis]

Love to see it!

Wonder how to reconcile the description of almost-negligible admin overhead with this description of a similar effort that warns, "We wanted to keep costs extremely low, so we had parent volunteers do all admin for the school. It's going really well, but it's an insane amount of work."

From my experience both teaching kids and organizing things, that seems like a much more likely outcome.

https://x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1917287461027459239

[CrazyStat]

FractalU isn't a school. It doesn't need to keep records, comply with miles of state regulations (employee and volunteer background checks, record keeping, mandatory exams, ...). It doesn't need to be able to demonstrate to other schools (or universities) what the students achieved. It doesn't need to demonstrate to the state that it's actually teaching the students something. It doesn't handle any money, so it doesn't need an accountant. It doesn't employ anyone. It doesn't need to worry about firing anyone.

My kids attended a small co-op school when they were young--5 employees (4 teachers + "director" who was mostly a floating assistant/substitute), everything else handled by parent volunteers. There's really an enormous amount of administrative overhead.

FractalU doesn't have any of that because it's not actually a school.

[dangus]

As a note, they do handle money. They charge $600 for a course on how to replicate their community elsewhere. I don’t know about tuition for other courses because the links are broken.

Some skepticism for me creeps in the more I peruse the fractal sites. Course links for the summer semester are broken, and a lot of the working content seems to be somewhat self-indulgent, reading more like a normal unremarkable friend group.

The MLM/cult vibes I’m getting are that the main purpose and monetary incentive seems to be in the mere existence of the “community” itself, and selling that aspiration as a $600 course. The website for the course (fractalcampus.com) is a bog-standard tech startup marketing landing page including “as seen on…”, testimonials, and other calls to action to buy this $600 course.

Notable with that course, we are talking about a paid course being sold where the only person with a true success story is the person selling the course. The Boston iteration seems to only consist of a weekly dinner so far.

Doesn’t that sound familiar, like every other influencer selling a self-help course we’ve ever seen?

I think if the paid course and stated analogy to YCombinator wasn’t a part of it I would be more enthusiastic, like, “yeah this thing is awesome, a real community that goes deeper than small talk, you’re all getting together and learning from each other and truly engaging.” But then the more I think about what they’re actually doing as actions rather than words, the more I feel like this whole thing isn’t 100% honest.

The founders’ biographies support the idea that they are a tech couple who exited with lucrative equity and are now landlords as their main job and that this is a glorified real estate course. “Co-living” is just a drop-in word for “landlord.”

“FractalU isn't a business or a nonprofit. In fact, it's not a formal organization at all.”

I’d put five bucks down that there’s an LLC or trust involved somewhere.

Idk, maybe I’m reading too deep into this, but there are a lot of scams in this world and I think this might be one of them.

[CrazyStat]

The instructor for each course handles the money for their own course:

> So instructors must deal with collecting money and managing taxes on their own.

[dangus]

Not for the Fractal Campus Accelerator Program, which is the part of this that feels like an MLM to me.

[aleph_minus_one]

> There's really an enormous amount of administrative overhead.

What kind of work does this administrative overhead in particular consist of?

[CrazyStat]

All the things I listed in the first paragraph.

[The_Amp_Walrus]

a school is an institution that teaches people

your definition of "actually a school" seems to arbitrarily include a lot of reporting and paperwork and commerce that have nothing to do with the bit where you teach people stuff

[wtroughton]

Education does not operate in a vacuum. Many students are incentivized by the social accreditation of completing a program. Institutions need some way to qualify that teaching is actually being done. Whether it be an examination, a certification, or bringing a project to completion.

[CrazyStat]

The reporting and paperwork are regulatory requirements imposed by the state, they aren’t arbitrary.

[ndriscoll]

It sounds like this approach is more like home school pods whereas the person you quoted was trying to actually form a "school" and keep the state happy? If the focus is just on teaching, what kind of admin work is there to do? Since she says parents volunteered, I assume this is for kids, and operating under a homeschool model (i.e. the parents just tell the state they're the instructor) would be a viable way to avoid regulatory burden even if you hire an outside tutor/instructor.

[urda]

Honestly yeah, it seems like a great experience since you have a more-engaged student group.