Vision and Pedagogy

Education Should be Fun and Exciting

We are a polytechnic run by rebellious math and science nerds who didn't fit in elsewhere in academia.

In 2024, a researcher from a T-10 university got sick of the ivory tower of academia and decided that they would rather teach STEM to prisoners instead.  They joined forces with other academics who were sick of workplace politics and pressure to publish or perish.

We work primarily with incarcerated students and have quickly become one of the leading providers of STEM education in US prisons.  (Which admittedly was not hard because very few others were doing it.)

We believe that education should feel electric and spark curiosity.

Traditional education has managed to suck almost all of the fun out of learning and research.

It has turned curiosity into compliance, discovery into memorization, and exploration into exhaustion.

We reject that model and substitute our own.

Elsewhere on this site we describe traditional educational institutions as a shotgun blast - firing in all direction and hoping something hits.  Or like throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks.

The Polytechnic model is different.

It is more like a laser-mounted sniper rifle.

We only do a handful of things, but we do them extremely well.

And we do them with intention.

Learning is Not a Race or a Competition

We focus on online asynchronous delivery which allows students to learn at their own pace.

We do not grade on curves.

We do not rank students against one another.

We don't care about GPA.

Most of our courses are Pass / Not Yet

Occasionally students may earn Pass with Honors for work that goes meaningfully above the standard expectations.

Why?

Because grades distort incentives and can create problematic power dynamics.

Bell curve grading manufactures artificial scarcity.  They turn peers into competitors.  We want students to see each other as partners in learning not their competition.

GPAs encourage students to optimize for points rather than truly understanding the material.

It encourages students to keep studying one thing even after reaching a point of diminishing returns just to make sure they can preserve that perfect 4.0 Grade Point Average.

We would much rather have students be well rounded and spend that time learning something new or whatever interests them - because innovation often occurs at the intersection of fields, not inside of one or the other.

We are not intersted in who can hoard the most academic tokens.

We are interetested in whether students can:

• Think critically

• Build real things

• Figure out how to approach unfamiliar problems

• Work well with others

• Be able to teach themselves new subjects when provided the resources.

That is education, not academic performative theater.

Project-Based Learning, Not Fragmented and Siloed

We favor topic-based and project-based learning, similar in spirit to approaches seen in places like Finland’s education reforms.

Instead of slicing knowledge into disconnected silos, we design larger projects that require students to:

Apply mathematics.

Use programming.

Consider physics or engineering.

Communicate clearly.

Reflect ethically.

Real problems do not arrive labeled “Algebra II.”

So neither do ours.

Students learn multiple domains at once because reality demands it.

Faculty Free from the Publish or Perish Pressures

We do not operate under a publish-or-perish model.

Our instructors are not chasing citation counts.

They are here to teach. To mentor. To build. To care.

We want faculty who are:

Excited.

Slightly obsessed (in a good way).

Deeply knowledgeable.

And genuinely happy to be there.

Students can tell the difference.

Joy is contagious. So is boredom.

We choose joy.

Can We vs. Should We?

As technologists, it is easy to become intoxicated by capability.

We can split the atom.

We can engineer genomes.

We can build artificial intelligence.

But there is another question.

Should we?

In Jurassic Park, the scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

We build ethical reflection directly into technical education.

Our students - many of whom have seen the consequences of systems failure up close - are uniquely positioned to wrestle seriously with responsibility, power, and impact of new technologies.

We do not produce technicians following a script.

We aim to cultivate wise builders who think critically about the implications and do the right thing.

The Real Goal

You will not use most of the discrete facts you learn in school.

What you will use:

The ability to teach yourself new things.

The discipline to complete hard projects.

The humility to admit when you don’t know.

The courage to try anyway.

The ability to play well with others in the sandbox.

Learning should be rigorous.

But it should also be joyful.