Getting a university degree has never seemed more important: college graduates earn more money, live longer, and are happier. But college degrees are expensive (especially in the US), narrowly focused (especially in the UK), and often fail to build the skills employers want (true in most countries).

The idea is similar to a US liberal arts degree (a rarity in the UK) but also more explicitly focused on "interdisciplinarity," or drawing on multiple subjects—economics, psychology, sociology, statistics—to solve complex problems like childhood obesity. In other words, the problem, not the subject, sits at the center of the curriculum. The skills students develop, the founders hope, will more closely align with what an AI-infused, automated world demands: collaboration between people and machines, critical thinking, speaking and writing skills, and data management, to name just a few things.