There’s a new type of teacher out there, and Bill Gates (yes THE Bill Gates) is his number one fan. Sal Khan,  an ebullient, articulate Harvard MBA and former hedge fund manager, is the proprietor of the non-profit khanacademy.org. The khanacademy.org site is a massive digital repository of free mini-lectures, all narrated by Khan. Gates has been quoted to say “This guy is amazing, It is awesome how much he has done with very little in the way of resources.” Gates and his 11-year-old son, Rory, began soaking up videos, from algebra to biology. Then, several weeks ago, at the Aspen Ideas Festival in front of 2,000 people, Gates gave the 33-year-old Khan a considerable shout-out. Reflecting on what he called the “mind-blowing misallocation” of resources away from education, Gates touted the “unbelievable” 10- to 15-minute Khan Academy tutorials “I’ve been using with my kids.” With admiration and surprise, Gates then noted that Khan “was a hedge fund guy making lots of money.” Now, Gates said, “I’d say we’ve moved about 160 IQ points from the hedge fund category to the teaching-many-people-in-a-leveraged-way category. It was a good day his wife let him quit his job.” Khan who learned of Gates’ praise through a YouTube video said ”It was really cool.”

Khan’s operational base is a converted walk-in closet in his Silicon Valley home, filled with a few hundred dollars’ worth of video equipment and bookshelves. It is here that Salman Khan produces his online lessons on Math, Science, and other subjects. The Khan Academy, appearing on YouTube and elsewhere is by any measure the most popular educational site online. Khan’s ‘playlist’ of over 1600 tutorials are now seen an average of 70,000 times a day. In any given month, Khan says, he’s reached about 200,000 students.

Distance education has been around for many years, and private (for-profit) schools are also doing very well. What sets the Khan Academy a part, aside for its viral word of mouth, and amazing growth, is that its free and concise. In less than 15 minutes Khan gets to the essence of the topic he’s lecturing about. Obviously you won’t learn topics such as Calculus in one session, the subject is divided into over 190 parts – these components seem to hit the sweet spot of length and substance. Moreover, Khan covers a vast array of topics, ranging from core Math (arithmetic, geometry, algebra,  trigonometry, calculus, and statistics), to Science ( biology, chemistry, and physics), and even economics, history, and more.  

Some sceptics in the education business don’t doubt that Khan means well and is helping students, but they question the impact of a system that doesn’t test performance or allow student-teacher discussion. Furthermore, sceptics have described Khan’s work as more of a library, not an academy. But Khan’s vision involves tens of thousands of tutorials offering world class virtual school, where anyone can learn anything, and (appropriately) his next step involves an interactive web application for user-paced practice and instruction.