Dr. Peterson says his new university will satisfy ‘mass hunger’ for education not found in ‘demented’ academia
This story is the fourth part in a series from a candid conversation Dr. Jordan Peterson had with Fox News Digital. The first part on Pride is available here, the second installment on his mandated sensitivity training is available here, and the third part on why the elites have so much animosity towards Trump is here.
Dr. Jordan Peterson says his new online university, "Peterson Academy," will help people fulfill their desire to get a true education that they can’t find in today’s "demented" and "unsalvageable" universities, all at a much more affordable price.
The world-renowned Canadian psychologist and author told Fox News Digital that his new online school would launch at the end of June and will grant online students access to the "best lecturers in the world" without them having to worry about being browbeaten by political agendas.
"It's only going to be people who want to be educated and want to be educated in a manner that isn't politically correct," Peterson told Fox News Digital.
The intellectual and former University of Toronto professor described the concept of Peterson Academy, stating, "Well, it's a university in that we feature the best university professors in the world. And I have the privilege of being able to call on such people and to make them a good offer and to have them participate avidly and to teach only what they really want to teach in the way they want to teach it."
He added, "And we bring them down to our studio in Miami, or go to their home country to film them. And we produce, I think, the best courses that have ever been filmed, not only in terms of their academic content, but also in terms of their production quality."
When asked about what courses he’s most excited about contributing to Peterson Academy, he mentioned his course on the first half of "Beyond Good and Evil" by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. "So that was a blast," he said. "And it's a great book, and I want to do the second half of the course as well. But it's a blast to walk through."
"I did a course on the Sermon on the Mount too, which I really enjoyed, and then a couple on different psychologists, one on Piaget," Peterson said.
Of course, with the school being an "online university," the psychologist mentioned the importance of a social media network that has been built to support the community of Peterson Academy students.
"So we built a social media network into the platform, and we hope that it will be the best social media network that there is. And for a variety of reasons, I think we've taken the best features of the social media networks that currently exist," he said.
"And we want to put young people in touch with other young people who are ambitious and forward aiming and who want to be educated, and that's what's going to happen."
Peterson stressed several times over the course of the interview that Peterson Academy will provide courses free from any political correctness or woke themes, though he specified it’s not "anti-woke" either.
"It's not a political enterprise. It's an educational enterprise. That's why it's a university essentially, a genuine university… we'll know soon if it's something that's going to work. I mean, there's a mass hunger for it," he said.
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During the candid interview, the famous thinker described how he views traditional western universities.
"I think the universities are so demented that I don't think they're salvageable," Peterson told Fox News Digital, alluding to many universities in America, especially the Ivy League institutions, succumbing to far-left ideology.
Another selling point of Peterson Academy is its price point, compared to traditional colleges.
"We hope to bring down the price of a bachelor's degree or bachelor's degree equivalent by like 95%, and I think we can do that," he said, later speculating, "We're looking at something around $500 a year – is our target at the moment – subject to some alteration over the next month because the economics of it are hard to work out."
Peterson added that the $500 price is more practical than tuition being free, because it adds a bit of important exclusivity to the program.
"People think that free is a good price, but free is a stupid price," he said. "And the reason that free is a stupid price is because free gets gamed by psychopaths. And so, Twitter is like 80% bots and Instagram and Facebook are swamped by unbelievably low quality and manipulative content… and that's because if the entry cost is zero, there's nothing keeping the charlatans and the parasites out."
He acknowledged that Peterson Academy is not yet an accredited institution but is "working" on that.
However, he expressed it wouldn’t be devastating if his school didn’t receive accreditation.
"We believe that we can do an end run around the formal accreditation institutions because we're going to make sure that if you obtain, let's say, a one-year certificate or a two-year certificate – three or four years certificate – from Peterson Academy, that you will know your stuff, because we're not going to engage in grade inflation, and we're not going to award degrees of completion, let’s say, even within a given course," Peterson said.
"And so we're going to be able to offer potential employers the assurance that the people who have taken, say, a year's worth of courses or four years’ worth of courses, took the damn courses," he added. "That they learned the material, that they mastered the material, that they were able to do that on their own accord."