Icdk outlook No. 04, May 2019 The Future of Education

42 - a tuition-free coding school with no teachers or lectures 
Founded in France with a newly opened department in Silicon Valley, right 
across the bridge from Facebook’s Headquarters, ‘42’, is a school offering 
tuition-free education in Computer Science. When entering the school, it mostly 
looks like a Computer-party as you enter a factory-style space filled with 1024 
iMacs, which (by no coincidence) is the same number as the number of bytes in 
a kilobyte. The enrolment process at 42 is an intensive basic training called “the 
piscine”, where students are coding 24/7 for 4 straight weeks, sleeping on the 
floor of the school. At the end of the training, the best applicants will be offered 
admission as a full-time student. The educational program is a gamified 
experience where students graduate when they reach level 21, which is 
expected to take 3-5 years. All learning is project-based, and students can take 
on any project they wish, but have to show progress. Grading is done by 
groups of 3-5 students at a higher level and there are thus no teachers or 
lectures. But what if you have a question? According to COO Britanny Bir, who 
ICDK met with at 42, the answer is quite simple: “If you are a computer 
scientist and face a problem in real life, what do you do? You Google it!” 
 
At 42, students have no specific meeting times as all learning is done through a gamified 
software they can access anytime on one of the school’s 1024 available computers. 
 
The purpose of the education is to offer everyone an opportunity to receive 
education and students on the school are provided with flexibility in their 
schedule as well as the ability to choose their own projects. Students have a 
variety of backgrounds including university degrees, but what most have in 
common is a feeling that the traditional educational model is too rigid and not 
focused enough on the job-market. 42 thus present an alternative that fits the 
demands of students and to a high degree also the industry. With 
endorsements from the CEO of Snapchat, LinkedIn and many other large tech 
companies, 42 is unbundling education by filling a gap driven both by student 
and industry-demand as well as a vision to change education as we know it. 

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