Interviewed by Reihan Salam and me. The thought he expresses below is that online innovators will offer credentials that are initially inferior to college degrees but which will ultimately become superior. The analogy would be with Japanese cars, which initially were considered inferior because they were cheap. However, when people noticed that their Toyotas and Hondas were lasting longer than their Fords and Chevys, the status of Japanese cars increased.

Reihan has some post-interview thoughts, including:

At the very least, colleges and universities should be required to release data on whether or not students demonstrate a significant improvement in learning between enrollment and graduation — and if they don’t, they should be barred from receiving federal student loan money.

Full half-hour video here. Of all the video discussions I have recorded so far, I thought this was the liveliest. Comments welcome.

[UPDATE: podcast version.]