[unono]

Perfect opportunity for hackers.

Employers pay big money to find employees. Students pay big money to get educated to get a job.

Hackers roll in with apps that allow students to do courses for free on the smartphone/tablet, sell the info of the students to employers, who then hire the students. Everyone wins. Hackers are proclaimed heros.

[jlgreco]

So... an online college with a placement department.

[unono]

No.

A free app.

The data points of the app users are sold to employers.

[jlgreco]

The only difference here is who is paying who. "Run an online university. Oh yeah, the university is an app, not a website, and therefore super trendy." is not a "perfect opportunity for hackers". The actual software involved with such a proposal is chump-work.

[unono]

Writing a really good app that is both enjoyable for students and a rigorous test of ability that employers are looking for is not chump work.

If you can show employers that your app truly tests useful abilities they would be lining up. The current education system fails at producing workers with the right skills and employers are always complaining abou this.

[jlgreco]

What you are looking for is Khan Academy. Khan Academy with enough content, with sufficiently rigorous content, with sufficiently rigorous evaluation, to become accredited so that employers will value their assessment of a students worth. Actually, they would need to be better than merely being accredited, since employers sure aren't bending over backwards to pay accredited universities serious cash for access to their students.

See, what is Khan Academy really lacking at this point? Is the hard part their website with youtube hosted videos? Are they really just jonesing for some mobile developers? Or is producing quality content with broad coverage and depth their bottleneck?

Making an app is the easy part. Education is not failing for want of an app. Certainly not for want of a gamified app.

But hey, I can't stop you. Knock yourself out. Hell, pitch it to YC; I hear they are doing non-profits now.

[unono]

No, this ain't non-profit, it's big profit stuff.

Khan academy is definitely not it. They teach traditional curriculum which is isn't useful to business.

The app is definitely isn't the easy part - it is basically the whole part. The current education system is a failure for 2 reasons

- unanalyzed teaching

- unmotivated students

Apps solve both problems, every user interaction recorded and analyzed, gamification.

You can turn it around even and starting hiring those students yourself and create your own megacorp with the best employees and make megabucks.

[prostoalex]

Great, who wants to be the first patient to undergo a surgery by a doctor with a diploma from an app?

[unono]

Gamers are better at (virtual) surgery than MDs

http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2012-11/teenage-gamers...

[imissmyjuno]

Alas, the question remains.