Jun 19, 2019 · 42m · y-combinator
Jeremy Rossmann of Make School on Income Share Agreements and the Future of College · Y Combinator
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In this interview, Make School co-founder Jeremy Rossmann discusses how his institution's accelerated two-year accredited computer science degree combines project-based pedagogy with Income Share Agreements to make tech education accessible, accountable, and aligned with graduate career outcomes.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The partners as informed peer 2.7 Guest teaching 5.6 Guest disagreement 1.4 The partners pushing back 0.6
speaking balance: gold is the partners, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 10:55 Rejecting the autodidact narrative as survivorship bias
Rossmann directly pushes back against the common industry belief that the best engineers are naturally self-taught, framing it as pure survivorship bias.
Hardest push from the partners ▶ 23:15 Questioning whether students will stack shortened degreesCannon proposes that shorter degree programs could lead students to stack elite liberal arts with practical coding schools, prompting Rossmann to clarify that students rarely stack degrees immediately.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 24:49 Exposing degree requirement headlines as corporate PRRossmann systematically breaks down the discrepancy between viral press releases claiming companies like Google don't require degrees and the reality of university recruiting funnels.
The partners hold their own ▶ 12:03 Cannon sharing technical self-learning limitationsCannon contributes his own domain insight into programming, noting how self-teaching only works for minimal project needs rather than production-grade environments unless paired with experienced peers.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The partners as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The partners pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Structuring a Two-Year Accelerated Bachelor's Degree | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Craig Cannon sets up the discussion by asking how a four-year degree can be compressed into two years, prompting Jeremy Rossmann to break down the mechanics of the 40-hour work-week curriculum structure. Rossmann explains the financing model and how institutional debt reversal aligns incentives with student employment outcomes. The conversation is collaborative and informational. | |
| Balancing Career Outcomes and Liberal Arts Education | 2 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Cannon asks if job outcomes are the sole driver over classical liberal arts mind expansion. Rossmann reframes the premise by arguing that non-career-focused liberal arts is a luxury education historically designed for the top one percent, while Make School explicitly serves lower-to-middle-income students who cannot afford that risk. | |
| Teaching Adaptable Skills and Technical Fundamentals | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Cannon relays a listener question regarding how to cultivate autodidactic technical ability across changing technology frameworks. Rossmann details their methodology of teaching underlying CS fundamentals across multiple stacks so students can transfer skills smoothly between frameworks. | |
| The Importance of Mentorship and Structured Classrooms | 4 | 7 | 3 | 1 | Cannon questions what percentage of people are actually autodidacts, which Rossmann confirms is very low (likely under 5%), pointing to low MOOC completion rates and industry survivorship bias. Rossmann shares his personal struggle as an MIT dropout failing to learn Django without a mentor to illustrate why structured flipped classrooms are crucial. Cannon chimes in with his own experience learning Python alongside technical peers. | |
| Messaging Strategies for Students and Parents | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Cannon asks about the dual-stakeholder communication dynamic between prospective students and their parents. Rossmann explains how parental anxiety has shifted from skepticism about legitimacy toward future-proofing against mounting college debt and underemployment. | |
| Future Predictions for Higher Education and Lifelong Learning | 3 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Cannon asks what higher education will look like in 18 years, and suggests students might stack degree programs. Rossmann gently rejects the stacking idea based on actual student behavior, proposing instead an initial early workforce entry followed by episodic lifelong learning returns. | |
| Degree Requirements, Tech Hiring Realities, and Equity | 3 | 7 | 2 | 1 | Cannon asks about tech giants dropping degree requirements based on recent headlines. Rossmann exposes this as mostly corporate PR, explaining that university recruiting pipelines still heavily enforce degree requirements and that eliminating degrees primarily harms non-privileged students who lack safety nets. | |
| Founder Stereotypes, WASC Accreditation, and Safety Nets | 3 | 6 | 2 | 0 | Cannon references the myth of young dropout founders succeeding at YC, and Rossmann points out that Make School was the only surviving company in his batch started by young dropouts. Rossmann elaborates on how accreditation through WASC bridges practical skills and degrees, stressing that dropping out is only safe for those with substantial privilege and safety nets. | |
| Adopting ISAs and Avoiding Predatory Models | 2 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Cannon inquires whether liberal arts schools should adopt ISAs and asks about potential predatory practices in the space. Rossmann explains the nuances of dishonest ISA models that replace scholarships rather than tuition, advocating for full institutional commitment to outcome-based financing. | |
| Student Entrepreneurship and Y Combinator Advice | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Cannon asks how Make School handles students eager to start companies right away and requests advice for incoming YC founders. Rossmann emphasizes that young founders often lack exposure to valuable problems, advising founders to stick strictly to core YC principles and focus on becoming default alive. |
Statements from this episode (25)
Rossmann: Make School students only pay tuition if they get jobs
“What's really special about it is that students don't have to pay tuition unless they get a job.”
Rossmann: Make School students can earn a four-year bachelor's in two years
“So you can actually graduate with a four year bachelor's in two years. If you take our intensive our intensive track.”
Rossmann: Structuring school like a workweek best prepares students for the workplace
“We want to be preparing our students for a transition into the workplace, and we've realized that the best way to do that is actually to structure their week like a work week.”
Rossmann: Make School Competes with Universities Rather Than Bootcamps
“Our student audience is, is majority students who would otherwise be in college or who are college age. So when people, you know, we just had a prospective student weekend last weekend a hundred students coming in from all over the country, parents coming in f…”
Rossmann: Make School Has Run Income Share Programs Since 2014
“We've been running the income share based program since 2014. So we actually have five years of data, our students getting jobs at Facebook, Google and Tesla and all these great companies.”
Rossmann: Make School takes on debt to fund student education upfront
“We get financing to cover our cost of educating students So we're the school that actually goes in debt when students enroll. It's kind of a reversal. So normally, you know, you enroll at a college, you go into debt. When you enroll at our college, we go into …”
Rossmann: Pure liberal arts education is a luxury model for elites
“The pure liberal arts education that is explicitly not career focused, that doesn't make any claims about whether it's going to be relevant to a job later, that's an education that was pioneered for and by elites.”
Rossmann: Up to 75% of elite university students have wealthy parents
“Anywhere from 60 to 75% of the students who go to schools like Stanford and MIT come from the top 20% of families by income, and oftentimes you get up to a quarter of the student body that's from the one percent of families by income.”
Rossmann: Tech employers reject trade coders unable to adapt to new frameworks
“They don't want people who've just learned a trade, who know how to assemble Ruby code today. And then when the framework gets updated next year, they're kind of lost. Or when the company makes a shift to a different framework, they don't know how to relearn.”
Rossmann: MOOCs have an industry standard completion rate of 2% to 5%
“And if you look at Courses that are kind of self-serve, like the MOOCs, you see that it's industry standard to have two, three, four, five percent completion rates, meaning that probably 95% of people are actually not a fit for the type of education that is au…”
Rossmann: Most potential top software engineers are not natural autodidacts
“I'm now certain that like the majority of people who could be a great software engineer at a really competitive and selective company the majority of those people are not by default autodidacts who could just go to a MOOC and get all the information they need.”
Rossmann: Project-based CS education builds more communication skills than liberal arts
“When you teach computer science in a project-based way, you also got to do some design. You got to do some user acquisition. You got to do some customer discovery. You got to work on a team and actually you get more communication skills than you might in a Lib…”
Rossmann: Traditional parental advice on college stopped working around 1999
“For many, many years they teach it to their kids and then it worked. And over the past 20 years it stopped working.”
Rossmann: Make School received regional bachelor's accreditation in fall 2018
“We are actually one of the first colleges to be created under new accreditation rules. So we were accredited this past fall. We offer a real accredited bachelor's degree accredited by the same accreditor that accredits Stanford and UC Berkeley and so on and so…”
Rossmann: Purdue and other universities use Make School's ISA documents
“We've started seeing actually is that other colleges, even big ones are adopting our income share agreements. The largest example is Purdue. The documents that we helped coauthor back in 2014 when we piloted our first college program, which has turned into thi…”
Rossmann predicts Harvard will soon be recognized primarily as a luxury good
“Harvard is going to be more obviously recognized as a luxury good, as an expensive purchase that works for the elites. And it's something that if you can afford to get your kids there and you can afford to not focus on hard skills, then great. You've purchased…”
Rossmann: Students will enter workforce earlier and return later for lifelong learning
“We're going to see students, you know, entering the workforce earlier, but then returning for further education at a higher rate. But I think that's not going to be stacked. It's going to be, you know, years down the line.”
Rossmann: Prestigious colleges remain the primary hiring pipeline for Google and Apple
“Top schools, the ones that attract majority wealthy students and that have a lot of prestige associated to them continue to be the major hiring funnels for new grads for these companies. Including Google and Apple. The large, a large number, at some companies …”
Rossmann: Corporate tech internships have not systematically dropped degree requirements
“And I can tell you with certainty that there is no university recruiting internship program that I've come across that has dropped Degrees as a requirement in any sort of systematic way.”
Rossmann: Silicon Valley IPO wealth flows primarily to the top 20%
“And when you think about the fact that a hundred companies are going IPO this year in the Silicon Valley, we are having billions of dollars of wealth transferred to the founders, investors, and employees of companies who all on average come from the top 20% of…”
Rossmann: Make School is the only surviving young dropout startup from its YC batch
“My co-founder and I are the only young founders in our batch whose company is still alive. So when you look at it from that perspective, you look today, what are the companies from my YC batch that still exist and are still successful? There is, there are zero…”
Rossmann predicts a higher education bubble will pop, closing many colleges
“I think there's going to be a pop in a sort of higher ed bubble where a lot of colleges are going to go out of business and it's going to be a lot of pain in higher ed because of this factor.”
Rossmann: Succeeding without a college degree primarily works for the privileged
“To say that you can succeed without a degree is on the face of it true, but it is most true if you come from privilege.”
Rossmann: Almost no college students actually pay published list tuition prices anymore
“In most schools, by the way, there's no such thing anymore as students paying list tuition. Schools keep track of this thing called the discount rate, and basically most schools don't actually charge the list tuition price to almost any students, right?”