prologue

University is a leap away from home, the first venture into the abyss.

It’s a new start, an admission ticket to a new community. This community is incredibly valuable — university alumni networks are carefully crafted to cultivate each university's reputation, credibility, and legacy.

However, school is expensive. According to a study done in 2019 by New York Life, it takes adults on average 18.5 years to pay off loans. If the upfront cost was worth the investment, then it may make sense. However, these days, it’s just “an expensive way to find yourself.”

School and its curriculum have increasingly failed to adapt to how students learn and grow, and more and more students are feeling trapped by the administrative and bureaucratic processes of repetitive lectures, classes, and homework.

For many, school is no longer worth the upfront investment for its grandiose promise of security.

Access to a high-quality education and a community of like-minded individuals shouldn’t be hinged on one’s financial situation or geographic location.

why dropoutDAO

We’re creating the first decentralized university for a community of risk-takers, dreamers, and builders who thrive outside the classroom.

We believe in supporting our community through peer-to-peer guidance and learning-by-doing. Large class zoom meetings are boring: their online guided curriculum is not personalized, and accountability is not built into the learning.

We dream of not being bound to a single campus or education system—but rather to provide a safe, encouraging space for students who are considering leaving, or have left school.

Through organizing co-living experiences and IRL events, we hope to create a decentralized, tight-knit campus of interesting people from cities around the world. We hope to redefine the way we shape connections and relationships, build social nodes with those around us, and find those nodes wherever we are in the world.

We envision that the future of education and personal growth has outpaced traditional universities. Rather than lectures and assignments, the future of learning will exist in decentralized pockets of collaborative, mission-driven spaces.

how the first decentralized university will be built

To us, reimagining education isn’t just another 12-week bootcamp, online course, or digital textbook — it involves renovating the entire system by which we have teachers work with students. It involves untangling ourselves from institutions and outdated systems of control. It involves redirecting the pressure and financial burden of higher education towards more efficient avenues of obtaining expertise.

Specifically, we will focus on…

community

The best part about post-secondary education is the experiences you have as you grow into adulthood, and become integrated in a powerful community. We seek to separate the social experiences of being at university from the curriculum to create an educational community without boundaries.

To emulate the social experiences of being at university, we will foster tight friend groups through shared experiences and memories that allow for serendipitous and spontaneous interactions. This includes facilitating IRL events and experiences like co-living houses throughout the year, especially for conferences, ohappy hours, intimate dinners, or field trips to say, ~sky dive~.

peer-to-peer learning

Sitting in large classes is unproductive for both professors and students. Professors can’t provide individualized support for students, and students don’t feel incentivized to contribute to discussions. Curriculum is outdated and does not provide the personalized education necessary to excel in today’s world.

With the ability to transmit knowledge online, there’s no longer a need to be bound to a single university campus. Rather, the  sharing of knowledge and culture across universities helps naturally accelerate learning as well as improve student diversity.

Information and knowledge are alive, dynamic, and constantly evolving. However, the current knowledge transfer system of crafting curriculum to teach is rigid and not up-to-date with our  methods of interacting with and absorbing information in the world. Innovation always outpaces expertise, and students trail behind unless they learn and make up for the difference by catching up themselves.

Rather than recycling rigid and outdated curriculum, we hope to support each member’s individual needs and ambitions. We will create opportunities for one-on-one personalized tutoring, office hours from peers, and short calls with experts.

stories from the community

School is not for everyone, and it is often hard to realize when it’s such a common path. DropoutDAO is a community of risk-takers, dreamers, and builders and through the community’s stories and backgrounds, we hope to reduce the stigma of dropping out or taking a leave from school.

👀 coming soon…

what’s next for dropoutDAO 👅

🛣 on the roadmap:

• IRL Events
• IRL Experiences
• Book Club
• Office Hours
• Gated Discord Community
• Collaborative community projects
• Funding cool projects & companies
• Empowering creatives through grants
• Free Merch Drops
• Job/Opportunities
• Degree Airdrops