Americans have learned to trust free markets. Republican or Democrat, we believe the unimpeded exchange of goods and services will yield better solutions than five-year plans set by even the most well-meaning public servants.

The thing about startups is you can make it, and if it's wrong you can remake it, and you can build a team that you want to have, a product that you want to have. You're utterly focused on your users or your customers and their needs, and trying to figure out how to meet those needs.

I'd never taken an SAT prep course. They were for weaker students.

Traditionally, universities have seen size as potentially dilutive to quality. If you doubled the size of campus and faculty, most would argue that you would make it a less compelling school. However, online schools will be as good as their classroom peers only if they are large enough to afford a substantial and ongoing investment.

After graduation, I took a job with Manufacturers Hanover Trust in software development. I don't think I was there more than a month.

Exciting discoveries in neuroscience are allowing us to fit educational methods to new understandings of how the brain develops.

The Internet rewards scale; by trading higher up-front costs for lower marginal cost, market leaders can invest in better technology and service. As a result, there is nothing online that is both great in quality and small in scale. Amazon wasn't originally a better bookstore than the small shops we mourn, but it is now.