The Horowitz Andreessen Academy, backed by a16z, has opened in San Francisco for college-aged kids who want to build things. Two authors who are also fathers ask themselves honestly whether they would send their own children.
Two tech bloggers became fathers and found they could no longer write the essay about whether this is the unbundling of the university. The question in front of them is concrete: would they send their own kids there.
The path you pay for no longer comes with a guarantee
In one Brooklyn neighbourhood, parents pay $65,000 a year from kindergarten onward, tied to a good high school, then a good college, then a good job. Call it $650,000 for a promise that the kid is set for life.
But nobody knows what a good job looks like in fifteen years. The authors' own parents did not send them to Duke and McGill so they could become bloggers. Math and law are both being churned by AI, and medicine, the one path that still looks safe, may not be what the child wants.
Push with the child, not against them
Rather than plan a life, the authors found a far easier route: find what the kid is obsessed with and pour effort there. The son is mad about chess and came out of a lost match grinning, because he learned that hard things get easier if you work. The daughter could not care less about chess and loves gymnastics and Michael Jackson, so the family is starting a puppeteering club.
This was not improvised. In a 2022 parenting essay the author wrote it down: expose kids to a lot of things early, then help them go as deep as they can on whatever excites them most.
What college actually hands you
Economist Tyler Cowen says the most valuable thing college gives you now is a better chance of getting married and staying married. A group of friends who go through real things together and watch each other grow is worth more than the degree. HAA, in the authors' words, is a Nashville for nerds: one house full of young people obsessed with building, surrounded by others just as obsessed.
Taylor Swift walked into Nashville record labels at eleven with demos and nobody signed her. She went off to learn guitar and songwriting, practised until her fingers bled, and at fourteen the family moved to Nashville. You cannot push a child into that.
So what is the answer? The authors say that twelve years from now it will not be up to them at all. Wherever the kids go, whatever they make of it, is what it will be.
Why it matters
The answer to 'which degree is safe' is disappearing while parents are still spending six figures to buy a twenty-year promise. The real shift is that with no safe route left, the only bet is the thing a child is obsessed with — and parents can mostly help with that, not decide it.
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