Peterson Academy Review: A New Alternative to College?

Last year, Jordan Peterson announced the launch of a new online university. Here's how it compares to going to college.

A couple of months ago, I was gifted a membership to Jordan Peterson’s new Peterson Academy. To say this is one of the best gifts I’ve ever received is an understatement. Anyone who knows me personally knows how much I love learning.

In 2023, Jordan Peterson announced he would be launching his own university. He envisions providing students with an actual education that challenges the current status quo.

Rather than peddling ideologies and minting out indebted graduates whose credentials are worthless in the labor market, Peterson wants to empower citizens with skills like critical thinking and discernment.

While I do think Mr. Peterson has a ways to go before his academy replaces that of the traditional university system, I do think he is on the right track. Entering adulthood by way of going to college is no longer a tenable option for the vast majority of Americans.

I recently completed my first course as a student in the Peterson Academy. For that course, I enrolled in Political Ideologies taught by Dr. Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham.

This article is a review of both the course as well as the Peterson Academy platform. I’ll walk you through what I liked, what I think can be improved, and how I think Jordan Peterson – and other academics like him – are redefining the future of higher education.

As the integration of new technologies in the workforce pushes humans to compete with AI and automation for jobs, it’s more important than ever before to start seriously considering new alternatives. That starts with re-evaluating the role a college education plays in accessing employment opportunities. 

But first, some background information

Before I dive into the actual review of the class and the Peterson Academy itself, I think it’s important to provide a little bit of background information on who I am as a student and how I approached the course.

I graduated from Syracuse University where I studied international relations, political science, history, and Middle Eastern studies. I wrote a senior thesis for my political science degree, graduating with distinction. I was a member of the honors program, graduated summa cum laude, and was Phi Beta Kappa eligible.

Tl;dr: I’m really good school.

I’m also a total nerd and am no stranger to self-study. In high school, I earned college credit for AP European History and AP Comparative Government and Politics by just reading textbooks as my school didn’t offer classes for either of those subjects. Currently, I’m working on a course I developed using ChatGPT about the history of modern economic thought which you can read more about here.

After I graduated I won a scholarship to study Arabic in the Middle East. I did just that and returned to the United States in 2014 where I began a career in Washington DC. I not only got a job for my degree but I also used my language training on the job. I traveled frequently to the Middle East representing the U.S. government as part of a nuclear security program with the Department of Defense.

I share all of this to provide context. I was a really good student and I studied the topics that were covered in the course.

Yet much of the information I learned in Political Ideologies was new to me. The more I dive into self-education – whether that’s through my own ChatGPT-generated coursework or through the Peterson Academy – the more I don’t feel like I learned anything in college. 

I studied international relations yet I did not know the difference between liberalism and conservatism until I took this class. In fact, the only thing I really remember about my international relations program was being asked to do a presentation on the lyrics of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” my freshman year and participating in Model UN my senior year.

I didn’t actually learn anything about how the world works much less what international relations looks like in practice.

I also studied history in college. I took an entire class on French history yet I never learned how consequential the French Revolution was not only to European history but to the way we politically categorize ourselves today. Voters in the United States describe themselves as being on the “Left” or on the “Right” based on competing ideologies that emerged during the French Revolution. Those ideologies come with divergent opinions on important values like freedom and property ownership.

The French Revolution is arguably the most important event in modern political history. How on earth was I conferred a degree in the social sciences without fully studying this singular event?

More importantly, I studied all these things – political science, history, and international relations – and I only took one introductory economics course the entire time. I never read any original works from Adam Smith, David Ricardo, or Karl Marx let alone Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman. 

Yes, history and political science are important, but you cannot understand how and why the modern world works without understanding the economic theories underpinning it. Almost every political belief you hold has an economic justification for it.

I share all of this to say I followed all of the rules, did really well in school, and learned absolutely nothing in the process.

If I studied all these things and didn’t learn anything about how political ideologies affect the world, what does that say for everyone else coming out of American universities?

The Course: Political Ideologies

Now that I’ve given you context for how I entered this course, let’s dive into what it covered.

Political Ideologies is an 8-hour course taught by Dr. Eric Kaufmann. He’s an expert on national identity and the rise of cultural ideologies in modern politics. The purpose of the course is to:

Example the core beliefs, intellectual origins, and historical development of each ideology, highlighting their complex relationships, internal tensions, and physical underpinnings.

Each lecture covers a different ideology. The ideologies covered in the course include:

• Liberalism

• Conservatism

• Socialism

• Fascism

• Nationalism

• Feminism

• Anti-Racism

Each course in the Peterson Academy comes with recommended books to read while you complete the lectures. This course assigned the following books:

• Political Ideologies: An Introduction (7th ed.) by Andrew Heywood

• Finding Oneself in the Other by G.A. Cohen

• The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

Combined, these books cost me $95. Considering I had to spend $150 on a “book” in college that was an amalgamation of Xerox printed articles – many of which were the professor’s own peer-reviewed journal submissions – I think $95 was a fair price.

The course didn’t provide any guidance on how to approach the reading materials. I decided to read the corresponding chapter for each ideology from the Heywood textbook before watching the lecture. 

I’m still working through the books from Cohen and Arendt. I don’t think these are essential for understanding what a political ideology is but I do think they help provide context for how ideologies form and how they are implemented within governments and society.

Once you complete a lecture there’s a 10-question quiz at the end. This allows you to test your knowledge on what you learned. You get an immediate score and feedback on any questions you missed. 

The biggest thing I took away from this course is that it gave me a new foundational lens from which I can analyze the world.

Political change can either come one of two ways: reform or revolution. If you look at the modern history of the West, change has often come through revolution.

The French and American Revolutions initiated political change. For the first time in human history, individuals could own property and vote. In Europe, the French Revolution emancipated the peasantry which eroded the power of the aristocracy and the monarchy.

The Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries culminated in economic change. It transformed how individuals participate in the economy. This necessitated a new political system, giving birth to economic socialism in the 20th century.

After the World Wars, the world order dramatically changed. Liberation movements around the world demanded cultural change. In the United States, this manifested in more rights for women and African-Americans.

After taking the course, it became clear to me that you should look at political, economic, and cultural lenses of analysis concurrently. Ideologies have different meanings and priorities depending on the lens you’re looking through. To understand how and why things are the way they are today, you have to do this level of analysis to form a more complete picture.

Let me give you an example of why this is important. A political liberal believes in individual freedom and liberty while a cultural liberal believes in equality. The word “liberal” has two different meanings depending on the lens of analysis you’re looking through. Capital “L” Liberals in American politics today often project cultural values that are in direct opposition with prevailing political liberal values.

By understanding these distinctions the course gives you a better foundation for navigating today’s political environment. Once you realize we’re not all speaking the same language about our beliefs and values, it’s easier to objectively parse through what is actually being said. Blind obedience to ideologies is often what leads to conflict, not necessarily the substance of the ideology itself.

Through the political-economic-cultural framework, the course empowered me to look at the history of ideologies objectively. It helped me better understand where we are today in our current political discourse and why certain issues have become so polarizing.

The Platform: The Peterson Academy

The Peterson Academy offers a new experience to learning. The lectures on the platform felt engaging and cinematic. I was part of the class rather than being talked to by a professor in a lecture hall or being read slides on a Zoom call.

I think this format will make the experience of asynchronous remote learning more enriching, especially as platforms like this are adapted for new immersive technologies like Apple Pro Vision. Soon you won’t just watch a lecture, you’ll actually be in it. 

The lectures come with a social feed. You can leave comments and mark specific timestamps from the lecture in your comments.

Right now the social feed feels very one-dimensional. The professor, of course, isn’t engaging with students and it doesn’t seem like students are engaging with each other.

Personally, I don’t want one more digital social media feed to manage. I understand there needs to be a social element of the platform but I don’t know that this is effective. I’d much rather attend an annual conference, for example, and get to meet my “classmates” in person than converse with them online.

The Peterson Academy offers a large library of courses ranging from Jordan Peterson’s lectures on the Sermon on the Mount to a course on The Shakespearean Tragedies. Right now there isn’t a curriculum to follow. You can take whatever courses you want at your discretion.

One of the competitive advantages of going through a traditional university is that it’s structured. You know what courses to take and when to take them. There’s a very clear set of objectives to follow in order to graduate. 

The Peterson Academy doesn’t offer this type of structure yet. If it wants to compete with a university, it needs to offer specializations with core courses and optional electives.

Related to that, I think each course needs more structure as well. While the recommended readings are just that – recommended – I do think they enhance the course and you should take the time to read the books.. 

Reading Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, for example, shows how political theory is applied. It walks you through the political, economic, and cultural drivers that led to the rise of Nazism in Germany. 

Yet Hannah Arendt isn't an easy read. I’m reading it cover-to-cover but given the depth of the material covered in the book, that could be a daunting assignment for many people.

Most of the recommended books are quite challenging. I think it would be helpful to have a syllabus – similar to what you’d get in a normal college class – that breaks down reading you should do as “homework” before completing each lecture.

So…is Peterson Academy worth it?

Right now the Peterson Academy is still in beta. The annual membership is $500 and does not include the cost of books. Depending on your preferences, each course may add $50+ in extra costs to cover the recommended readings.

Compared to a traditional college course, I think this is a steal. Most 3-credit courses cost several thousands dollars and the books for the course will run hundreds of dollars, if not more.

The primary critique against the Peterson Academy is that it’s not accredited and you obviously won’t receive a diploma. That raises an interesting question, though. Given the irrelevance of a college diploma for most white collar jobs, does that even matter anymore?

I got my degree from an accredited private university. As I mentioned before, I graduated with honors at the top of my class. Yet none of that actually mattered when it came time for me to find a job. Once I graduated and entered the real world, I quickly discovered that my job prospects were more dependent on my social capital than my diploma or GPA. 

The truth is, it really doesn’t matter if you go to an accredited university or not. What matters is if you go to a school with large embedded networks like Harvard or Stanford. That’s where you’ll find access to better job opportunities. 

It’s very clear that the university system as it exists now is no longer tenable. You can’t enter the workforce with debt and expect to live a comfortable middle class life. The math doesn’t math.

There has to be an alternative. I don’t know if the Peterson Academy is the right answer, but I appreciate that Jordan Peterson is willing to try and see what comes from it.  

Rather than focusing on a credential as the end goal, the Peterson Academy focuses on knowledge and learning. It stimulates your intellectual curiosity and teaches you how to learn. While that doesn’t necessarily lead you to a clear cut path for a stable career, maybe it’s not supposed to.

The vast majority of today’s desk jobs don’t actually require a college degree. And thanks to the proliferation of AI, it’s unlikely many of those desk jobs will still exist in the near future.

Optimists argue that we are heading into a Second Renaissance where workers will be alleviated from the tedium of work thanks to automation. This will allow individuals to focus on creative pursuits and scientific discovery at scale.

If that is true the Peterson Academy could serve as a gateway for greater intellectual endeavors much like Plato’s Academy did in Ancient Greece.

Regardless, if you’re intellectually curious and you like to learn like me, you really can’t beat the value the Peterson Academy offers.

The next class I’m registered for is The Economics of Human Flourishing. Most of economics is dominated by the assumption of scarcity. I’m really excited to see how this course challenges my ideas about how the economy works.

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