Ep 77: AI Tutors, College, and the Future of Education in 15 Years

Watch the YouTube video version above or listen to the podcast below!

Episode Summary

In this surprise episode of Enterprising Minds, the crew takes on a big question: what will education look like 15 years from now, when today’s kids are entering college?

Using a first-principles framework, they explore the deeper purpose of education beyond grades, degrees, and job preparation. The discussion moves through broad exposure, shared thinking frameworks, confidence-building, critical reasoning, and the need for students to learn how to ask better questions.

AI becomes the catalyst for rethinking the system. Could AI tutors personalize learning for every student? Could they help students move faster through core subjects and create more space for conversation, mentorship, projects, and exploration? Or could too much personalization isolate learners and narrow their future too early?

The episode also wrestles with the future of college. Dave makes the case that college is still valuable as a safe place to screw up, explore ideas, build independence, and learn through real-world mistakes. Ruthi pushes into the possibility of a more tailored system where AI helps students understand how they learn, while teachers become better facilitators and mentors. Alex brings the conversation back to the challenge of outdated curricula, especially in fast-moving fields like marketing, music, and technology.

Together, they land on a future where AI may accelerate learning and improve access to personalized support, but the human elements of education — community, mentorship, confidence, discussion, and learning how to think — become even more important.

Ep 77: AI Tutors, College, and the Future of Education in 15 Years Podcast and Video Transcript

Ep 77: AI Tutors, College, and the Future of Education in 15 Years

​ Hello and welcome to Enterprising Minds. Got the whole crew here. So, we're doing a bit of a surprise episode. Alex has not told us what we're talking about. So, we're just going to…

Alex Pokorny: All right. Dive straight into it. All right.

Rubric and Ground Rules

Alex Pokorny: The idea is: what will education look like 15 years from now, when your kids are basically of college age? Which is crazily hard to think about. So, I broke it down, and we're going to run through a bit of a rubric to help us get to that point. And the idea is to just hit it fresh. We don't have backgrounds in this stuff—we're marketers. We have some AI background, but that's about it. So, we're thinking about the age of AI we have right now, and the truths of education we know will probably remain, versus the parts of the experience that will change because of the tools, the methods, the buildings, and the teachers, right?

So, not everything we're going to do is going to be accurate, and that's okay. This may age like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that has been forgotten in a backpack, but that's okay. So, here's…

Dave Dougherty: Or like a twine.

Alex Pokorny: …that we're going to play through, and I'm going to keep it even on my screen to make sure that we remember it. The first part is going to be a first-principles, jobs-to-be-done piece: what is the purpose of education? And we're going to stay positive on this. From what little I've read, these things remain true: teachers want to provide a good experience, and they want their kids to succeed. Parents don't want their kids to be idiots. I think that's a universal truth.

Dave Dougherty: Kids. Parents, most.

Alex Pokorny: And they see education as the method to not be an idiot. That's all I'm going to say as far as that. I'm not going to go any further on that because I think those remain true throughout time. What that looks like, how that plays out, what that really means to each individual and their incentives—I think that gets really personalized very quickly. But those basic ones are true, that people want this system to work. So, we're going to keep that in mind: stay positive with the idea that we're trying to make sure that people get what they want, which is they want the system to succeed. So, we'll go through the purpose, but then we're going to talk about a utopia version of what kind of would be the best. We will talk about dystopia, but not beforehand. It's too easy to go fantasy-dark on AI stuff, and there's too much of that in the news. We're not going to do that, but we'll talk a little bit about how this might not go well. Then mixing that utopia, dystopia, and then base, we'll come up with a reality—so, a summary piece. So, we're not going to really hit the question-answer until we break it down.

Purpose of Education

Alex Pokorny: So, first off is what do you think or what do you see as the point of education?

Dave Dougherty: Well, this is just going to be really easy because my kid's really into basketball, So, he'll just play sports.

Okay, cut that because neither of you got that joke. The point of education—education. Now, coming from a family of teachers, uh, obviously I have some bias here. I think it is to prepare you for whatever life inevitably throws at you, right? There's a certain amount of well rounding that needs to occur, right?

It's not enough just to be like the super sciencey kid, right? You also, need to understand that, all right? You need to work out too. You know, and vice versa, right? You can't just be the super sport kid. You also, need to know that, you know, painting and, and dance and, um, music exists as well.

Alex Pokorny: Okay.

Dave Dougherty: Now, granted, these are broad brushes and…

Thinking it out loud, but I think that certain amount of well rounding and, and providing useful skills is there now, how much of that is actually occurring? You know, that's where the real debate is and that's a totally different podcast. Yeah. I'm not, not getting into that.

Alex Pokorny: Not…

Dave Dougherty: Yep.

Alex Pokorny: Now.

Dave Dougherty: Yep. Yep.

I think, off the cuff, without any time to really put together a well thought out response, that's what I would go with.

Alex Pokorny: Okay,

Dave Dougherty: Yeah.

Alex Pokorny: Earth.

Ruthi Corcoran: I appreciate you buying me time to come up with my well thought out response within two minutes.

Shared Frameworks

Ruthi Corcoran: I like that you covered the exposure and an exploration—I think that's a big part of it, so I'm not going to cover that here, but I think that is important. So, what I wrote down here is instilling shared practices and ways of thinking that can become habits for life. So, when I think about practices and ways of thinking, these are giving everybody a shared framework. Whether it be here's how you read, or here's how you work through a math problem, or here's how you write—even practices for the basic. These are practices and ways of thinking that become habits over time.

So, we cultivate them, and they can serve us later on in life—and early on, too. That's going to be some of the basics, right? The writing, the reading, some of the arithmetic. Over time, education also expands into things like critical thinking and reasoning, and building out the neural pathways for doing this sort of higher-level thinking. And importantly, I think there is a piece of everybody having a similar framework so that when we come together in different circumstances, we have a shared structure with which we can work. We're not totally foreign or alien to each other in how we work day-to-day.

Dave Dougherty: Alex, are you MCing this or are you going to jump into,

Alex Pokorny: I will jump in just at the end just to throw in my 2 cents before we keep going. I haven't given myself any time to think about any of these questions either, So, I'm trying to take this as, as live as

Dave Dougherty: Okay.

Alex Pokorny: for me, I'm taking it almost in as, this is interesting because we went very personal and then we went more cultural. I'm thinking about it definitely in a larger kind of education and mass idea as well, of creating an educated populace kind of a well functioning population. And then from the individual's incentive, it's gaining the skills to be seen as competent in whatever you're doing.

Which Dave, I think you hit also, in preparing in the well-rounded Also, like the expose and explore piece too. That's huge. I wouldn't know about a lot of things if it wasn't for school first, giving me an opportunity to be in the library that day and see that book. I had that job that I never heard about before and I was fascinated with. All those kind of like little moments that you need to look a little deeper, understand a bit more.

Dave Dougherty: right.

Alex Pokorny: But yeah, I was reading just before this: literacy levels of Americans are not great—pretty poor in adults, actually. So, more than 20% of American adults are not literate, and that kills me.

Ruthi Corcoran: Is that true? Literate to it, like at all or like just to a particular,

Alex Pokorny: Sixth

Ruthi Corcoran: know?

Alex Pokorny: So, there's

Ruthi Corcoran: Yes.

Alex Pokorny: I think level two and level one is below that and there's a good chunk that aren't level one.

Ruthi Corcoran: Need to update Some of my priors.

Skills and Confidence

Dave Dougherty: You know what's, what's interesting about this and I think now granted, this seems kind of left field, at least for me, with, right, with the. Marketing, kind of future career kind of AI podcast. Right. But I think it is important because, anybody that's going through the various systems will be our future colleagues.

Um, but then, you know, I think about the, at least the way that the three of us met is because of a very specific skillset around search engine optimization that is not taught. You have to be introduced to it, right? I would not have the last 15 years of my career if I didn't ask some people some questions on, “Hey, what are you doing over there? How does that work?” And then they showed me,

Alex Pokorny: Okay.

Dave Dougherty: Right? So, that's the part that I find fascinating, right? Because there was nothing in the schools that I went to, or the degrees that I went into, that would've said SEO—nothing.

Alex Pokorny: Correct. Same.

Dave Dougherty: nothing. So, being open to opportunities and being able to take advantage of those, I think is going to be really important.

But also, the thing that I've been struggling with, too—just with my own lived experiences, personally, with my son—is making sure that people have the confidence to go ask a question, right? I had a basketball kid come up to me the other day, because I coach, and it was great.

He came up to me—he doesn't really know me, it's a new team—and he was just like, “Hey, what do you think I could work on?” But then as soon as he said that, he started backing away, so I couldn't give him the answer. And I'm like, “What are you… hey, what are you doing? Where are you going?”

Alex Pokorny: Am shying away.

Literally.

Dave Dougherty: You already did the hard part—you asked. And so, going and talking to him… we ended up having a nice thing, but having that… he knew that he wanted to know, but then getting there was the hard part. Now, granted, he's in elementary school, he has an excuse. But I also know some 20- and 30-year-olds who also suffer from that same problem.

Alex Pokorny: Sure.

I don't know if that helps, like, reframe it a little bit to be a little more specific. But anecdotally, I think that's at least where I'm coming from, whereas how do you have the confidence to navigate the challenges you see in every single day? And then what are the, the context in which you make those decisions, right?

And all of that is based on the experiences you're exposed to and how you've learned to navigate things previously through those exposures. Right.

Alex Pokorny: Absolutely true.

School vs Learning

Alex Pokorny: And that's an interesting thing too, because there is, what does school look like 15 years from now? Is it a little different than what does learning look like 15 years from now?

Dave Dougherty: Okay.

Alex Pokorny: Because now I'm thinking just refining the question based upon that because that's a really good point.

Because there is a lot that is self-education, self-discovery.

And if we're going the route that I want us to take, which is speaking of like the value of college in 15 years, stuff like that, that's where I want to gear this conversation towards. I think we're going to have to hit more of a structured education.

Like what is the point of structured education maybe is a better question. The one I gave you because you were right on with is the point of education as a whole. Ruthi, you started taking it more towards that kind of populous, structured piece. And it's going to be a mix of both because to Dave's exact point, the incentives from the kid learning the self-discovery, that's confidence to ask that question.

That is a huge piece of going to school and being a part of that environment where you ask questions, you learn things. It's a safe space, and the purpose is for you to learn, right? Versus a job that might be the purpose for you to do versus learn.

AI Utopia Prompt

Alex Pokorny: Okay, So, let me throw the AI spin onto it.

We've seen these tools advance quickly. Good and bad. There's always going to be a mix.

Different parallels have been tried with AI, which I think they all fall a little short because it's a little different with the internet. So, there's now more information, more connectivity, more ability to share and learn—good and bad. Or a calculator in a math class, which can give you the answer without you having to go through the hard work—which is good and bad; it allows you to do some pretty advanced math, but it also has drawbacks as well. Also seeing it being called like the printing press, where it was hard to get a lot of deep information before, and this is going to help you get information faster and give more people more opportunity to learn things. So, a variety going on there. If you were designing a utopia experience that is a college-level experience—or if you need to take it down a level and say, “I would prefer this would be the pattern,” throwing in that new technology on top of it—does it change things for you? Would you set things up differently? Is it just a hindrance or a barrier? How do you see AI playing a role in that structured environment— that structure of a college-level sort of education experience?

Dave Dougherty: Ruthi, I'm going to let you go.

Ruthi Corcoran: The hard one, Alex, we have to, we might have to pause our recording just to give us a little brain.

Alex Pokorny: Do you want me, do me to run first? can. I've got Some early thoughts on this that might help.

Dave Dougherty: Yeah, go ahead.

AI First Schools

Alex Pokorny: I know in Texas—and they've opened a second location as well—there’s an AI-first elementary school. It's a private school that is trying to design AI tutors and basically build education around each individual student.

So, there's nobody teaching to the average or teaching to the lowest or the highest. Instead, each individual kid does their own program. Basically, the teacher is therefore more of a facilitator. They do have quite a bit of hands-on playtime and other things because actually they're able to get their coursework done very quickly. And the kids currently are scoring in the 99th percentile in basically anything. They're also—mainly it's a private school. It's a wealthy private school. There's a whole lot of bias built into this. Their parents are mainly engineers based on the corporations that's been basically sponsoring this kind of stuff. So, a lot of bias of the individuals in the class. So, the method is—the results you have to take with a grain of salt on that one. I'm trying to play this through all the way up to college. I think it doesn't change where they want to succeed. They want to be prepared for the thing that they want to do.

They also want to be enabled to go after the thing they want to do. So, I think this personalization ends up being a life coach—sort of a confidant friend who is more educated—which keeps pushing them along whatever path they're going on. I could see it as a way that it will help them explore a lot more things, and therefore college would have to be more general, or involve lots of different specialized programs that are not necessarily taught always by a human being—maybe they're proctored by staff, maybe there's a TA who is staff for multiple classes of different types. And the AI tool has allowed them to go more toward certification advancement—very specialized things all over the place. Much more customized approach that way. There still is a purpose to the community-building.

There's still a purpose to the education, the sports, everything. But instead, it's a wider open environment where the teacher's not so much focused on the exact question-by-question answer. Instead, it's much more guidance…

Dave Dougherty: So, I take issue with this because, well, okay, let's just be honest: people don't want to admit this, but engineers think in a very particular way, and that's a very different way of thinking and designing the kids' futures. Which also—that's the problem with a lot of modern parents—is that they think they can design the kids' future.

No, you're a shepherd. You're not a, a widget maker. because they're, they're people. How much of what you're doing today aligns with what you wanted to be when you grew up in first grade? Because for me, I wanted to be a robot builder. I thought that was cool. I had no idea what that meant, but man, I saw Star Wars and was like, this would be sweet.

And then I realized there's a lot of math, and I'm like, well, that's done. Then I went to being, I'm a baseball star. Why? Because I was super into baseball and yeah, why not? You know, go train, go do that. Go dah, dah. Then it was basketball, then it was musician, right? I actually got to do the musician thing.

But it was always like, it changed as I was exposed to other things. And I guess, I mean, you could make the argument now with how much I'm doing with ai, it's, it, I'm tangentially doing the robot building. But you know, that's a bit of a stretch. You know what I mean?

Alex Pokorny: Yeah, maybe it's an outcome thing of you're seeing Some of the outcomes that you wanted without having to go through the barriers that were put up before.

Or not,

Dave Dougherty: but it's also, okay is the schooling stuff specifically for the outcome of getting a job, or is it for you, teach you how to think? Because for me, I've always said that, okay, I graduated into the great recession with two arts degrees, So, nobody was going to hand me anything, So, I've had to fight.

Alex Pokorny: yeah.

Dave Dougherty: Luckily that's in my personality now. Then I went to business school. My arts degrees from undergrad taught me how to think creatively, how to think expansively, how to connect interesting solutions that you wouldn't necessarily connect. The business school MBA taught me how the world worked.

Not how it should've, would've, coulda—like a lot of my artist friends got caught up in—but like: this is the lowdown, dirty, in-the-trenches P&L processes; like how decisions get made, right?

Alex Pokorny: So, you needed

Dave Dougherty: my career has been a balance of both,

Alex Pokorny: Yeah.

Dave Dougherty: right? Here's what I have to do. Here's what could happen if we actually got our ducks in a row.

Alex Pokorny: Sure.

Dave Dougherty: Here's the opportunity, here's what it'll take to get there. That combination of things is something that I naturally fell into because that's where my brain is naturally optimized. That will sound like the fourth level of hell for somebody else, right?

Alex Pokorny: No, that's fair. Everybody's got a different.

Dave Dougherty: just like for me, I mean, working with Some of the really technical sciencey people that I've worked with in my career, we can't meet on that level because they don't understand the creative process.

They, or they're creative in their own way. Let me frame it that way. It's not necessarily arts writing coming up with Something out of nothing. It's combining novel So,lutions, yeah. So, I mean, I kind of take issue with this, like, okay, great, you now have this like life coach to bring you through.

Yeah. It'll help, it takes the decision, the weight of the decisions off of you because now you feel like you've at least bounced Something off of Somebody or Something else.

Alex Pokorny: a good

Yeah.

Dave Dougherty: but. No, you still have, you have to be open to the experiences in which you're creating, right? And I know this is a kind of a simple thing.

Like, I mean, all the things that I'm, I'm telling even in third grade, second, third grade basketball, if you're just standing around going here, here, nobody's passing you the ball. Why? Because you're off to one side away from the ball, not looking like you're ready. To make a move or attack the basket, right?

You're just standing and waiting for Something to happen, and I have to coach those kids all the time. You need to show your teammates by moving around and making space. You need to make your own shot, right? You have to move around. You have to put the signals out there that you're ready to receive the pass to then do what you do best, which is shoot from 10 feet out, right?

Or you attack the basket. And that's a very minute, kind of metaphor for a lot of the job seeking stuff that, that we're seeing too, where it's like, if you're just standing around waiting for Somebody to look at your application, that just ain't going to happen. Especially with all the AI stuff happening now, right?

You need to show yourself available. You need to jump and jive and, and make sure that you know, your network knows you're looking and doing all these other things to make yourself available and to make sure that you. Make your own shots.

College as Safe Sandbox

Alex Pokorny: So, getting back to the question of the day-to-day of college: what then does that look like?

Dave Dougherty: I think college is a safe place to screw up,

Alex Pokorny: So, what

Dave Dougherty: right? You screw up with relationships, you screw up in your fields, you show up, you test questions, right? Like, you know, like I thought I wanted to do music education. Hard pass on that three months into it. That was a good way for me to go and do that because I went and I sat through what a high school orchestra concert looked like.

I'm like, Ooh, I'm not doing 30 years of that. No way. So, I think it's a safe place to explore the ideas, to explore how you fit into the world. You know, with the different people groups. Like, if you're living on your own for the first time, man, there's a lot of learning and a lot of mistakes that have to be made for you to, to learn those things, you know, and I'm saying mistakes broadly.

I'm generally thinking of, of making mistakes as a, as a good thing. because that's how you learn ultimately, right? Um,

Alex Pokorny: and you're 15 years out in Utopia version is very similar to the way it is today.

Dave Dougherty: I think so. I think so, it's not like, it's not rote job. Do this thing, you become a perfect marketer that can slot into this, you know, role. No, I need you to think, I need you to go solve a problem. I need you to go, do you know I need, I'm hiring you because I need extra capabilities for such and such thing.

It has. And you need to have the confidence in your ability and your knowledge of, of doing the thing to say yes or no, or if you're really leveled up, be willing to say, I don't know, and go figure it out.

Alex Pokorny: Okay,

Dave Dougherty: All right. I'll step off my soapbox, but that's just, that's where you triggered me.

Ruthi Corcoran: All kinds of. New thoughts that I've got.

Personalized Tutoring Future

Ruthi Corcoran: So, Some of these weren't in my original picture, but we're going to add them on. So, I'll just say I don't think that your picture of the school in Texas and wherever else is at odds with Dave's vision.

Alex Pokorny: No, it sounds similar actually. Yeah.

Ruthi Corcoran: I think they work well together. So, some of the things that struck me, that I'm going to put more trends that I think I would, is utopian-leaning—exactly what the mechanics of it look like, I'm not going to pretend to guess, but that tailored education and this idea of having a tutor that's helping you personally seems like a super valuable thing, right? We all know we learn differently and there's…

Some of us need examples.

Some of us like abstract. Some of us need the visuals. Some of us don't like being able to tailor a student's education towards what they need, and importantly, students learning through the process of pre-K up, like pre-K through 12, how it is they need to learn could be a super valuable skill to have. I think our current education is So, one size fits all. almost hard to learn, here's how I need to learn, unless you're getting help from parents.

Alex Pokorny: Yeah.

Ruthi Corcoran: So, that I think is a huge piece. thing that I think could potentially be really important is reducing the variability of which could be bad.

Like there, there's a dystopian piece we can talk about in a bit, but reducing the variability of getting lucky with a teacher like Dave. Everything you described about what you're doing with all your basketball kids is awesome. I suspect most average third grade basketball coaches are not doing that, right?

That's, they're not methodical. They're not watching videos, they're not looking up plans of how can I be a better coach? And so, if there's another mechanism through which the vast majority of students get better coaching or get better teaching, that's not only tailored to them, but potentially ups the overall level, that seems awesome.

Us towards that utopia. Then the other thing I was thinking about this college thing in particular, and this could be true of high school, that's the other thing.

Rethinking Time in School

Ruthi Corcoran: Like maybe we can get through this a bit faster. Do we really need that amount of time? Or can you get most of these basic skills to a point where, okay, now college looks different because it's more you're off in the world doing Something.

I still like that idea of the safe place to screw up, but maybe it just takes a different form. And what I like is this idea of less school, learning, more interaction, more exploration. If having a perSo,nalized tutor that's getting you through the basics, getting you through the core curriculum, these types of things, opens up space for more and more people to learn What we've learned, which is, hey, us having conversations like this is actually a really helpful different way of learning.

Than just talking to an AI and actually can be more fruitful. Both in terms of our own learning, but then also, being able to translate that into taking action and working on projects that could be really excellent.

Tutors and Small Groups

Ruthi Corcoran: And then I was also thinking, okay, if you have these sort of… some sort of form of tutoring type…

Maybe it's not one-on-one, right? Maybe it could be a small group. That's a possibility too. So, it's not so individualized, because that can be isolating, but it allows you to go deeper, right? If you're super excited about X topic, why not? Go down that rabbit hole, explore, see where it is. And because you get to the learnings faster, maybe there's less stumbling.

You don't have to go through two arts degrees and MBA to figure out, okay, I'm going to actually lean in here. Or in my case, oh, I was all about finance. I'm going to do finance. Oh, PS until I took my, went to my first internship and I went, oh this isn't. This isn't really what I'm into. Wouldn't it have been nice if Sometime earlier, perhaps I could have learned that much easier that would've saved me perhaps a lot of time and I could have spent more time doing Something was interesting to me and that was more productive. So, those are Some of the things that I was thinking about as if we could trend towards that, of being able to go deeper where we care, having tailored type education, but then also, can we spend more of our time doing this type of interaction that we're doing where you're discussing ideas, you're bouncing off ways of thinking, you're working on projects that, that seems like Something that could. It in a good way, change the way we do education.

Alex Pokorny: Yeah, I

Socratic Learning Over Papers

Dave Dougherty: Yeah, honestly anything that would be more of the Socratic method I think makes sense, right? You just, you get into the room, you pose a question, you debate it because then you actually have to wrestle with it. It's not just write a paper, show me you read the book, who cares? I got ChatGPT for that.

I don't need that. I got Notebook LM for that. Cool. Do I remember half of the stuff that I put in? No, definitely not. Um. But the stuff that I've actually listened to or I've actually you know, digested and thought about, then that's the stuff that I actually remember. Um. And the thing that I appreciate about this setup with you guys, I will come out of left field with Some idea, and I love the fact that, one or both of you will be like, okay, what?

But for me, it seemed like the natural thing that everybody would think that way. It's like, no, you're a jerk. Like,

Alex Pokorny: This is exactly what I wanted.

Great Teachers vs Bad

Alex Pokorny: A major point I wanted us to hit on, which was humanities Place in education, we've all

Dave Dougherty: Right.

Alex Pokorny: terrible teachers and we've all had great

Dave Dougherty: Most.

Alex Pokorny: and

I've had a couple of bad teachers that. Turned me off from areas that I thought I was going to continue in, I learned So, little that I felt like I couldn't do the next level of the class even, and I would've to repeat entire semester, which quite frankly was just not realistic.

So, it dropped me out of that. I also, had Some

Dave Dougherty: Right.

Alex Pokorny: who gave me skills that I use today that are still above and beyond others, because of those experiences that I had that were. and challenging and all the random, practices that they came up with that made a difference.

Honestly. It made a huge difference. So, this is my next piece of, could you have the best experience in a VR environment or a virtual environment, or prerecorded or live or interactive environment, does a human being need to be there? Because now you could take the best of the best teachers together and cut all the worst to worst teachers.

Is that better or is that worse? And I love the idea of the So,cratic method live because there is a huge piece of plagiarism and the issues that I think colleges are facing today that

Dave Dougherty: Yeah,

Alex Pokorny: very nicely So,lved actually a way to do education via that method. But standardized testing, there's a whole lot there too.

But, So, let's go back to humanities. Place versus a tool's place in education.

Dave Dougherty: I'm going to circle back on the good teachers of the bad teachers and I'm going to, I'm going to go back with the anecdotes because that's what I'm good at.

Music School Tattoo Story

Dave Dougherty: I will show my one and only tattoo is related to bad teachers. That's why I'm showing it. because when I was in music school, I had already been.

Down to Nashville. I've recorded my own record. I've already pressed a number of them, went and figured out how to sell them in the record stores, in the head shops and anywhere else that would take independent music. I had booked all my own gigs, I'd done all that. I knew what it was like. And my girlfriend at the time, now wife, she was working at Warner Brother Records.

So, like I had a bunch of teachers who were then like, this is the way the music industry works. I'm like, ah. No. No, not, no. Which you can imagine made them a, a big fan of mine. But the, the flip side of it was I had one teacher who was a complete jerk, and he eventually, like at the time, you know, I had long hair.

I looked like a viking. I mean, it was the total like rockstar look. And I was in his class or in his office because I had to do a makeup test. And he said offhand well, you can always drop out and be an ignorant rocker. I said, excuse me, I will wait for an apology. And until then, I will I will not be coming to class and you will not fail me because I'm going to go report you to the office right now.

It also helped that I was on the students with disabilities list for insomnia. As you can imagine, a rockstar lifestyle is not conducive to 8:00 AM classes. But the, um, that teacher in particular, plus the other music comp teachers in that particular space, they tried banning me from the student recitals, but you needed student recitals in order to graduate.

But because I had a network of classmates and performers who liked the way that I wrote, who liked hanging out, they would say, “Hey, so-and-so gave me this composition.” It's this name, and it was under a pen name. Um, so that then when they would play the piece and people started clapping, they would point at me and piss off all the professors.

But I got the credits I needed and I had to work against the system, and it sucked it, it was really hard because, it was. Teachers are supposed to help you, right? That was my undergrad experience, So, not aweSome.

Mentors Who Open Doors

Dave Dougherty: But then when I went into um, the MBA, I got a phone call from a guy who, um, was the dean of a very particular program, said, Hey, I saw that you applied for this one.

Have you ever thought of this? I said, no, that sounds interesting. Here's what I'm into. And he is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're more of a perfect fit. So, then he got me in. I'm like, all right, great. So, then he ended up becoming one of my professors and he, um, knew I was transitioning from being a full-time musician into more of the, you know, normal life of marketing and business and.

He came in one day and he said, “I signed you up for the Public Relations Society of America. You're on the membership committee. The first meeting is tomorrow at seven in the morning at this Caribou in Minneapolis.” And I just went, “What?”

But I fully recognized he went out on a limb for me. So, at the time I was going to bed at four in the morning, man, I was not. Still, I was not,

Alex Pokorny: 7:00 AM.

Dave Dougherty: not on normal hours. So, I made sure I stayed awake and I was awake until 10:00 AM that day and then went to bed. Because if you're going to go out on a limp for me and like really force my hand, then yeah, I'm going to show up.

I'm not going to make you a liar. I, being a man of my word is, is very, very important to me. Um, So, I made sure that I backed that up. But, you know, I mean that, that good and bad piece has really defined my journey. You know, more So, than Some other people. Like, I wish I could say I've had more than four teachers that have really done amazing things and pushed things, but no, that's just not been my experience.

Ruthi Corcoran: So, I think that gets at a fair bit of the human element in the different dynamics, specifically with teachers, and it's not obvious how that evolves.

AI Tools for Teachers

Ruthi Corcoran: I like this idea of teacher as a facilitator, or I'm not sure the exact words to characterize the professor you had in your post-grad who's almost like teacher as support, or like giving you the hand up and saying, “Hey, I see your potential.”

Almost like teacher as support, or like giving you the hand up and saying, “Hey, I see your potential. Let's help you. Let's tap into it and help you reach that potential.”

Versus I think what I. One of the things I, I hear and take away from your undergrad experience is teacher as manager of lots of students.

Alex Pokorny: Yep.

Ruthi Corcoran: more like they're having to deal with a quite a, like a large student body and any student that makes it a little bit difficult or is like a thorn on their side, is a real problem because they're having to just, it's like it's a volume based deal,

Alex Pokorny: Yeah,

Ruthi Corcoran: and.

Alex Pokorny: at scale.

Ruthi Corcoran: Education at scale. Yes, that's a good way of putting it. And there's probably a whole dimension here about as a resource for teachers, helping them through in better ways: “Hey, this student is taking a different approach. How can I reframe? How can I help this student in the same way we do with our own children?”

When my 5-year-old is just driving me up the wall. hard to just take a moment to go, okay, but I will because I care a lot, right? And So, it's like how can I reframe this? So, how, So, maybe there's a piece here about AI as being a tool for our teachers. To make better connections and to rethink their connections.

because I'm sure it doesn't feel great for those teachers either. that's not why they got into this business to, to manage and corral students at scale. Like I suspect maybe Some of them get kicks out of it, but I suspect that's the minority. But I also, want to think about, Alex, your question about like, where's the human element?

I think, Dave, you mentioning the So,cratic method like that hits it on the head. It's like there is a piece, there is an important element for individual learning. That's why we read books. That's why we spend time. Thinking deeply with a topic, be it reading, maybe Sometimes it's listening to podcasts. I think writing is always going to be an important part. Like I think writing needs to be there no matter what. Learning how to write is in a way of learning how to think. So, I think there's an element there, but that's all individualized learning, and I think AI can play a really powerful role in amplifying that. But then also, then making space for where do we come together to learn and what does that look like? I think facilitation is a lacking skill. That's Something perhaps will need to be built up. If you're going to go to school to learn to be a teacher, perhaps that's a skill set that all of a sudden gets boosted.

10 points. And now we have to spend a lot more of the curriculum on how do we facilitate conversations? How do we facilitate learning and discussion in a classroom? because it's not an easy thing. And that's where the shift of the focus goes.

Keeping Curriculum Current

Alex Pokorny: Lemme throw a little spin out here.

Ruthi Corcoran: Yeah.

Alex Pokorny: Dave and I both actually had a similar experience in that nothing in our education—Ruthi, maybe it's true for you as well—hit our career, right? It wasn't like it didn't exist. At the time of our graduation, it was that the books were outdated and the professors had an experience from maybe 15 or 20 years ago, or actually maybe no experience at all, and they're just teaching via the textbook, basically. Literally, I graduated straight into a digital marketing career and there was one chapter of one class that covered digital marketing.

That was it literally like what, 10, 12 pages. That was it for my entire four years, and that was my immediate first job outside of college, was straight into that field. Clearly already a full-time field. Clearly there's already a need for it, but methods that were being used were dated. Definitely you had an AI-based education program or textbook or whatever it is, however you're crafting this semester. That information would always be up to date, but it also would be very quickly beyond the experience of the professor, like in a faster-moving field or in a different moving field.

Dave, you mentioned music. The music industry definitely changes quickly and it definitely has changed a lot in the last 10 years. Marketing changed a lot in the last 10 years. A lot of careers actually have—so, a professor who gets tenure is out of date. How do these AI tools, do they keep things up to date? Does this become a hindrance? Is there a way to integrate this and get this to work within the system? How does this kind of play out? Yeah.

Dave Dougherty: You know what's interesting for me too is that with the guest lecturing that I've been doing over the last couple years, I've experienced how different colleges have different personalities, and that was something I didn't necessarily appreciate until, um, I had been doing a lot of speaking at one institution in the Twin Cities, and then I got invited to an event held by the competing, you know, institution in the Twin Cities.

And one of them is much more research focused. And, uh, that was immediately apparent. Now, granted, I'm very sensitive to the way in which people communicate. So, I like immediately picked up on the fact that every single professor started every sentence with, well, you'll remember in this study. It's like, well, no because I didn't read that one. Uh, right.

Alex Pokorny: Yeah,

Dave Dougherty: Okay, based on what you're trying to do, here are the frameworks from these thought leaders that are going to work for you,

Alex Pokorny: sure.

Dave Dougherty: or you should go check out to then go apply it between those two institutions.

I know which one I prefer. You know, because it's just like, oh my God, if I have to, like, if I have to spend more time. Citing things and like formatting things into a template. It was already bad when I was a, when I was a student, but like now as an adult, it's 20,000 times worse. Don't make me fill out a template in anything.

And yeah.

Ruthi Corcoran: I

Dave Dougherty: Yeah. Anyway.

Liberal Arts vs Job Skills

Ruthi Corcoran: That, Alex, you were—or a thought that came up as you were talking, Alex—which is: I realize I have maybe a different underlying assumption or way of thinking about college, which is I went to a liberal arts college, and that finance was, I think, the only—like it was one of the few degrees where you were learning the technical skills you might apply to your job, unless you were going to be an art historian, unless you were going to go into the State Department. And then, so, I also studied political science and what you're describing here is like with your comment about there was one chapter that discussed SEO or digital marketing, and maybe SEO was mentioned in a paragraph, maybe, right?

Alex Pokorny: Yeah,

Ruthi Corcoran: that assumes that you're going to college to learn a specific set of skills. So, there's like the liberal arts piece And there's the technical piece. And in, I have a strong, pretty strong bias that says, I think important part of our education, probably should be more on the liberal arts side,

like learning how to think learning how to grapple with different ideas, learning how to have conversations like the ones we're having. Even maybe going So, far as to say, Hey, let's do the great books. Let's really grapple with those big ideas because we're learning how to learn. As one

of you mentioned earlier in the podcast, and the cool thing about AI is that it can allow you to quickly learn the technical skills that now you don't have to spend time in a classroom learning, because to your point, it's always going to be a few step behind where industry is. So, why wouldn't you just go learn on the job with AI as your. You're self-educating assistant and maybe that's my bias of where college in the future goes is it can focus much more on the, learn how to think and let's grapple with the big human ideas and then can focus on the technical things on the job.

Alex Pokorny: I think that plays out.

Framework Thinking in Math

Alex Pokorny: I was trying to think of that, of okay, put that against, I, I always think of math classes just being very standardized, e English and writing and kinda literacy aspect of education. It can vary a lot. There's a lot of different practices and methods. But math is a little bit more structured in like you're learning algebra pre, pre-calc, geometry, whatever it is, trig, whatever you

Dave Dougherty: No.

Alex Pokorny: And those ones are frameworks. Thinking about it a little deeper, like it it's beyond the calculator thing. is because you show that you know the framework by doing the problems and answering them and getting the right answer and showing the work and whatever it is, you know, that gets you that piece. But it's a framework that they're trying to teach you each time. And even though it can be very literal, and to me it just smacked of like being very technical, like you speak of the technical skills. It was like, okay, math is like a very technical skill kind of thing.

Ruthi Corcoran: It have to be.

Alex Pokorny: But yeah, it actually it's

Ruthi Corcoran: A statistical way of thinking how to think about data and numbers,

Alex Pokorny: sure.

Ruthi Corcoran: doesn't have to be on the job, that, that's like a framework, just like economics. How do you have an economic way of thinking?

Alex Pokorny: Yeah, I was thinking geometry too, of here's a physical object. How do you split it up So, that you can determine whatever you're trying to figure out about it? You. You don't look at it as a whole and be like, oh, I know a formula for every cube out there. You're like, no, I can measure one face and I can keep on moving.

There's a framework that got built in, which allows you to deal with whatever situation that appears, which also, plays out in terms of. Every job is a little different. It's not like you're going to learn and the job changes constantly. So, it's not if you learned the entry level job of today for this particular company, it's perfectly applicable for a different company or even the same company three years from now. Like it's all those things vary a lot. So, the framework methodology makes more sense, which is the core of education anyways. Maybe I'm just realizing this out loud.

Workplace Lessons After School

Dave Dougherty: I think, but it's also, like even in the, your chosen field, right? I mean, the, the number of times where I have made the assumption that the perSo,n I'm speaking with will have the context to understand like, okay. Granted, I'm going to, I'm going to So,und like the profesSo,rs that I was just making fun of.

If you'll remember, Porter's Five Forces or the Innovator's Dilemma,

Alex Pokorny: Sure.

Dave Dougherty: we're living that out real time and they'll be like, what are you talking about? I'm like, you don't remember the hit from 1975? Like.

Alex Pokorny: An you.

Dave Dougherty: Yeah, but you know, So, it's just like, okay, uh, there, there are ways of, of applying stuff. But again, like, I mean, we've said this on we, I have said this on multiple podcasts that I'm really struggling with a lot of coworkers post-, where. They are So, caught up in data and de-risking decision making because that's the way that they were brought up, that they end up inadvertently micromanaging.

So, like, now granted, this is a, this is a, a personal thing. Uh, maybe more of a personal, uh, psychological thing, but I was getting So, frustrated with the level of detail that the higher ups wanted, that I finally just summarized, uh, in a title slide that I had to talk to them. Can we hit the 5% target? Yeah.

Why? because you said to, and then I moved on to the next slide. I'm like, there's literally no time for me to look at all of the nitty gritty, nor does my brain work that way. But am I confident that I can hit your arbitrary number? Yes, I am. And I will beat that number. Why? Because that's who I am. Like, you know, like, but that's also, that is me knowing me.

That seventh level of hell for that other person of, oh my God, you would actually say that to your boss. Yeah. because then he is not surprised later. But also, see crappy experiences with professors. I'm done with people who think they're important because they think they're important, yeah. Anyway, I'll shut up before I'm in trouble.

Education Needs Community

Alex Pokorny: there's a probably a good summary point that we can hit actually right now in terms of, we discussed that basically education is a lot about exploration. It's a lot about frameworks, and it's a lot about community. So, there's a lot of human connection points. That are necessary as a part of that.

And I think we didn't really hit it, but there's also, a piece of, physical development and maturity as well. So, while that one school does, all their learning and an hour or two hours of the day, and the rest of it is, this other experiential, the kind of time, that's funny. There's a Star Trek episode that has Some like kids in it and they're like, oh, you don't know theoretical physics by, age 10.

My gosh, where did you, what, where, what kind of rock did you grow up on? A comment. And it's like massively accelerated education, right?

Maybe it's possible to have a very accelerated education, but there's also those experiences are a huge part of your education in terms of how you interact with other people and humanity in general.

Dave Dougherty: Yeah.

So, you can't leave that alone in an AI world. You have to sit instead, like maybe AI is that teacher's helper in terms of understanding the personalities of the individuals in the room or making sure, hey, you got a few loud voices during your Socratic method kind of question, answer, debate.

you get them engaged?

 pulling up the full class, trying to get everybody to speak or how do show that a topic well enough to be able to discuss it, debate it, write it live, however it is that you prove that you understand those frameworks without memorizing, the five P's of whatever, the five, a's of whatever thing, which there's always.

Yeah, Some number,

Dave Dougherty: That's just a way to get more consulting dollars into your company. That's really what that boils down to,

Alex Pokorny: saw a

funnel thing today that just annoyed the heck out of me. Everybody's repeated it and I was like, oh, that's a terrible imagery. But everyone's using it and yeah, they're using it to sell. And I was just like, these are terrible methods. Actually. What? Actually, what's behind this?

Wow.

Ruthi Corcoran: So, I think going back to your comment about, potentially accelerating learning in Some areas, but then also, allowing for more space for Something like the So,cratic method or discussion or interaction, right? Whatever that form it takes. I think it ties back nicely to a point I think Dave, you made at the very beginning about instilling confidence, right?

equipping, equipping students with the skills they need to be successful, but also, the confidence to be able to effectively use that. And I think that's an area where there is a lot. There are a lot of gains to be made in our current education system, and So, if that's, if there's, if that's one of the opportunities that AI can help us take advantage of, that seems like a huge win.

Dave Dougherty: All right.

Wrap Up and Where to Find Us

Dave Dougherty: Well, thank you everybody for making it this far into this episode. This is rather fun—you know, the exploratory… Obviously, we don't have the answers. Uh, it's fun to think about. Let us know what you think about this.

Alex Pokorny: do.

Dave Dougherty: Hit us up on socials: Enterprising Minds, Substack for the Pathways Newsletter.

There, there's opportunities to interact with us there and enterprising-minds.com for anything else you would need from us. So, go check out those things. In the meantime, have a great rest of your week, and we'll see you in two weeks on the next episode. Take care.

Alex Pokorny: Cheers.

Ruthi Corcoran: Cheers.

Alex Pokorny: I.