A16Z enters the college market

Andreessen Horowitz became the first venture capital firm to launch a college alternative on Tuesday, betting that elite students now see traditional higher education as a bad deal.

Forty-two million for a new academy

Gagan Biyani, cofounder of the three point two billion dollar ed-tech unicorn Udemy, is running the Horowitz Andreessen Academy with forty-two million dollars from a sixteen z and individual investors.

Free tuition for the founding class

The one-year San Francisco program starts September twenty twenty-seven with about fifty students. It is unaccredited, awards no degree, takes no federal aid, and guarantees no job. Tuition is free plus fifty thousand dollars in compute credits and five thousand dollars travel budget.

Elite private university prices ahead

The Academy plans to seek regulatory approval for a two-year program starting in twenty twenty-eight. If approved, Biyani said it expects to charge something similar to elite private universities in the range of sixty thousand to ninety thousand dollars a year.

“to charge something similar to elite private universities”

Not a rejection of college itself

Biyani insisted the school is not rejecting higher education. We believe in college, he said. Instead it rejects the idea that eighteen-year-olds in San Francisco are only valuable if they have a startup idea to dedicate a decade to.

“we believe in college”

Guest speakers and committed faculty

The Academy promises students will learn from people shaping the future including Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, Satya Nadella, Mira Murati, Fei-Fei Li and Travis Kalanick as guest speakers. Faculty include Instacart cofounder Max Mullen and former Windows president Steven Sinofsky teaching multi-session courses.

Three-part year with co-ops

Teaching is not the primary thing, Biyani said. The primary thing is the ability for students to pursue their own objectives. The year splits three ways: September through April on campus in San Francisco, May travelling abroad, and June through August in a co-op at a partner company.

“The primary thing we're offering is the ability for students to pursue their own objectives”

Ten founding partners from a sixteen z network

The Academy has ten founding partners mostly from a sixteen z's network: Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit and Stripe. Another fifty-odd hiring partners from Databricks to Boom Supersonic are committed to interviewing or considering students. Co-ops are typically paid but not guaranteed.

Experts doubt the long-term model

Bryan Caplan said the Academy will work for fifty handpicked students but not for the top five thousand. Ryan Craig called it a bootcamp with an unrealistic plan to be a college. Alternative universities charging elite tuition without federal aid have repeatedly failed because it is hard to compete with free money from the government.

“It's hard to compete with free money from the government”