Replicating US Education for Global Talent

Growing up in Silicon Valley, home to both capitalists and liberals, we often heard two potentially conflicting messages:

1. Intelligence is distributed equally across races, ethnicities, and genders, so everyone deserves a fair chance.
2. The US education system is exceptional, and that’s why talent in India and Africa struggle to achieve the same success as Stanford engineers or MIT quants.

1. The American Education in a Table

But let’s deconstruct what the liberal arts education system of the US did for us step by step. And then, let’s consider how internet-connected Gen Z developers, designers, and entrepreneurs from Africa or South Asia, with access to a desktop or laptop (5-20% of those regions, 100M-400M+ people), can replicate this success. The following table is based on the educational experiences of an LD Talent cofounder who attended Challenger School, The Harker School, Stanford University, and Northwestern University. The examples are tech-heavy, but we are confident analogous ones can be done for other industries like finance, media, healthcare, etc.

Let’s go through what we learned and mark:

• 🟰 if majority-worlders (Africans and South Asians) cover the same foundational concepts, in their schools
• 🤖 if they can use ChatGPT and Grammarly to match Western standards for business performance (scaffolding away the problem)
• 📹 if they can gain similar exposure through platforms like YouTube and Netflix for business purposes
• 📚 if they can read and pick up the fundamental concepts, skills, and awareness within months to a year, enough for a holistic worldview and business applications (assuming sufficient IQ/EQ)
• 🎧 if they can develop understanding through audiobooks (Audible), podcasts (Spotify), Google Scholar, and a lifelong reading culture
• ❌ if they likely cannot pick the concepts up after the age of 22 and graduating from undergrad
• 💻 if they can pick it up on the job 

Please note that what follows are hypotheses and approximations based on what we’ve seen of tens of thousands of African and South Asian recent grads who applied to our network. What follows is by no means rigorous scientific data.

Areas	Primary School	Secondary School	Undergrad	Grad
Math	(a) Arithmetic 🟰 (b) Algebra 🟰 (c) Geometry 🟰	(a) Calculus (AP level) 📚 or 🟰 (b) Multi-variable Calculus 📚 or 🟰	(a) Proof-based Math 📚 (b) Linear Algebra 📚 or 🟰 (c) Combinatorics 📚 or  🟰 (d) Differential Equations 📚 (e) Theory of Computation 🟰 (f) Probability Theory 🟰 or 📚 (g) Statistics 🟰 or 📚	N/A
Science & Technology	(a) Scientific Method including Research Questions, Hypotheses, System Design, Methods, Experiment, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Future Research, etc. 📚	(a) Physics (AP): Kinematics, Dyn., Energy, E&M, Electronics… 📚 (b) Chemistry (AP): Balancing Equations, Reactions, Bonds, Stoichiometry, Conversions, etc. 🟰 (c) Biology (AP): Theory of Evolution, DNA/RNA Transcription & Translation, Basic Medicine, etc. 📚	(a) Object Oriented Programming 🟰 (b) Comp. Architecture 🟰 or 📚 (c) Computer Systems 🟰 or 📚 (d) Algorithms  🟰 or 📚 (e) Reading Scholarly Literature, Identifying Gaps, Intellectual Merit, Broader Impact, etc. 📚	(a) AI/ML from Regression to Transformers 📚 (b) CV, NLP, Robotics, RL, PGM, DL, etc. 📚 or 🟰 (c) HCI and Design Research 📚 (d) Quantitative and Qualitative Methods 📚 (e) Prompt Engineering 📚
Social Science	(a) Basic Geography 🟰 (b) Basic History 📚	(a) Economics (AP level) 📚 (b) World History (AP level) 📚	(a) Applied Geography through Study Abroad 📹 (b) Business Relationships with a Diverse Global Community 💻	(a) Psychology, Psychiatry, and Metacognition 📚 (b) Philosophy, Theory of Knowledge, etc. 📚 (c) Understanding of Global Politics and Government 📚 and 🎧
Language	(a) American Accent ❌ (b) Public Speaking and Confidence ❌ or 📚 (c) Writing 🤖 (d) Spelling 🤖 (e) Vocabulary 🤖 (f) Grammar 🤖 (g) Memorization 🟰	(a) English (AP level)  🤖 or 🎧📚 (b) Foreign Language 🟰 (c) Student Government, Debate, etc. 🟰 or 📹	(a) Communicating around FAANGM level Systems Design challenges 📚 (b) Versatility in talking business, tech, and general schmoozing/networking ❌ or 📹 or 🎧	(a) Identifying and Subscribing to Lifelong Learning content like Webster’s Word of the Day, Investopedia, Health Podcasts, etc. 🎧 or 📹 (b) Knowing they should speak up when they have value to provide 📚
Culture	(a) Entrepreneurial Mindset of the USA 📚 (b) Critical Reading and Logical Thinking 📚 (c) Individualistic Mentality 📚 or 🎧 or 📹 or ❌ or 💻 (d) Strict rule-following and respect for law, honesty 📚 or 💻	(a) Sports 🟰 or ❌ (b) Art and Performing Arts 🕺🎵 🟰 (c) Films and Documentaries 🟰 (d) Reading Books, Audible 🎧📚 (e) Competitive Spirit 💻 (f) Cooking and Taste 🟰 (g) Fashion 📹  (h) Eclectic Hobbies 🟰 or ❌ or 📹 (i) Exploration of personal family history and culture 🟰 or ❌	(a) Seminal experiences like Product Design Labs, World Class Museums, Architectural Feats, High-Fashion Branding, Michelin Level Taste, World Travel 📹 or 🎧 or ❌ (b) Internships at labs or companies in areas like Astrophysics, AI, etc. 💻 (c) Global Economic View 📚 (d) MBA level business understanding 📚 (e) Liberal Arts perspective – knows a bit about methods of Anthropology, Sociology, etc. 🎧 (f) Self-directed help-seeking 🤖 and 📚	(a) Practical Hands-on Training and Lab Work 💻 (b) Career Orientation 💻 (c) Up to Date Knowledge 💻 or 🤖 or 📹 or 🎧 (d) Up to Date Tech 💻 and 🤖 and 📹 and 🎧 (e) Lifelong Learning, Feedback Taking Mindset  💻 and  📹 and 🎧 and 🤖 (f) Industry/Investopedia-esque Finance lingo 💻 and 📚 (g) Understanding of cash vs. equity 💻 and 📚 (h) Valuing Time 💻 and 📚 (i) Time Value of Money 📚

2. Simulating the US Education System in a 100% Online Format

To anchor talent to US standards, LD Talent’s 81 required onboarding MCQs, 28-question free response exam, and 8-part AI chatbot session create awareness of all the domains discussed above. This is so that talent may quickly come up to speed using AI, videos, reading material, and podcasts (🤖📹📚🎧) within the first few months of their work (💻) on the platform.

On top of this, talent complete FAANGM-level system design challenges, where they must present both a writeup and a diagram, as well as hard Leetcode/Hackerank challenges, where they need to upload videos communicating their algorithmic solution to our YouTube channel. Finally, we conduct a video interview with them and our system checks their transcripts, emergency contacts, and references. We award them badges in areas like debugging or documentation to further highlight their unique qualities. In this way, we believe we will create a majority world workforce that is on par with privileged Western tech workers and entrepreneurs.

To see what we are talking about, you can find examples of talent with the verified “badge” next to their name on our talent search tool. You can find histograms and quotes describing the talent who have made it through our process in this running document.

3. Bridging Expertise Gaps with Pedagogical Best Practices

Some talent are also tasked with design patterns-related challenges, covered in more detail under the “Automated Vetting, Training” section. These challenges help talent transition from intermediate to expert developers. Inspired by MOOC platforms (Coursera, EdX) and the TOEFL/GRE/GMAT online exams, which are already in active use in the majority world, our tools transition learners by leveraging best practices from education research, considering prior knowledge, knowledge organization, motivation, frequent practice, feedback, self-direction, concept transfer, formative assessment, cognitive load, etc. In this way, these design patterns challenges further close the gap and ease the transition of our talent into world-class experts.

4. Should your net worth be your network?

Even if a majority-worlder achieves US-level academic and professional prowess, they may still fail to get ahead. This is because often, “Your network is your net worth”. If the reason we paid hundreds of thousands of dollars (directly or through taxes) for a US education is, in the end, mainly for the network we got out of it, as opposed to the concepts/knowledge, then surely LD Talent can perform arbitrage by using our company’s social network in the US but our AI-enabled talent’s intelligence. 

Given the context of this arbitrage, we might step back and demystify what goes into a US education! Incredibly, most of what seems to distinguish a US education from an Indian or African one are surface-level attributes (the ❌s) rather than fundamental concepts bound to specific brain pathways only shapable in youth. No wonder why individuals from India can come to the US and succeed without ever having gone to school (except perhaps a master’s) in the US. For example, our CPO, Anisha, came from Nepal last year and she’s already in high demand from clients for her design and full-stack development work. Rashika and Parth‘s stories of working remotely with high profile clients are other case studies.

So then why do global markets reward US-educated individuals with $100-200K+/year when many others get just $10-20K/year? 

We believe the reason comes from politics and “connections” rather than free market capitalism. And hence, we challenge the belief that a US-level education cannot be replicated for university graduates from South Asia and Africa with sufficient IQ and EQ, through a 10 to 40-hour online onboarding program followed by a year or more of US-facing product-building work.

5. How Pro-America is this perspective?

This perspective is absolutely pro-America for the following reasons:

• Capitalism, meritocracy, and equal opportunity are core American values.
• America’s Declaration of Independence speaks of the rights of man, not of people physically born in a specific place.
• Americans generally don’t want socialist handouts. They want to know their true value and earn what they deserve in a free market.
• Many American people believe in God, and that God loves His children in Africa and Nepal just as much as His children in Texas and New York.

We believe that while somewhat simplified, these reasons should resonate with most Americans.

6. Comparing and Contrasting Our Plan, DEI, and Affirmative Action

Note that we have some strong takes ahead, but we believe they are grounded in good values. We have also made some simplifications, but we believe the core concept is crucial to understand.

Many American people believe diversity is a strength, but have qualms about affirmative action-based DEI programs. By reverse-engineering the US education system and creating an AI platform to replicate it around the world, we can create a pipeline of qualified knowledge workers and future immigrants or satellite remote workers who can make our country and its companies greater than ever before.

• Diverse workforces will automatically emerge without relying solely on well-meaning, often necessary, but still controversial affirmative action policies. Black and brown people who need money will work hard for it and achieve it if the system is a fair and international free market.
• Black and brown billionaires will emerge all over the world. They will inspire and collaborate with the minorities of America in a manner likely more potent than affirmative action or DEI alone. When young black and brown children in America see people like them running the world, they will certainly rise up themselves.
• India, once in the shackles of Western imperialism, is now getting richer. Just see the effect of this on Indian-American household wealth.
• Strengthening the ties between Africa and the African-American diaspora, and between indigenous peoples around the world, we wager will have a similar effect. Power often lies in numbers, and there are more than 3 billion black and brown people in this world. America must ally itself with this rising force.

7. What should Americans do?

We acknowledge this vision is optimistic and grounded in ideals, but we also think that analysis of prices and rates around the world and the advent of AI, make this approach more relatable.

Many American families already have enough wealth to turn into financially independent investors if only we would let ourselves reap the returns of investing in low-cost, high-promise, young, and AI-assisted global talent.

For those Americans who have a net worth (home equity+stocks+bonds+savings, etc.) less than $200K, our government can create a UBI program that allows Americans to do research, get PhDs, do something creative, or do whatever they’d like rather than being forced into competing with AI and international talent for jobs they don’t want to do.

It’s very important for America to encourage its people to engage with graduate-level education for our country to be secure and on the cutting edge of technology. This “PhDs for all” UBI program is not welfare, but rather an investment in the form of industry-driven educational conditional cash transfer that will keep America competitive.

The UBI itself can also be paid for by the returns on investing in the young and growing populations of Africa and South Asia. In this way, it can be a win-win, allowing collaborations abroad to resolve inequalities at home, both inspirationally as described earlier, and practically.

This plan is detailed in our article: How AI and Globalization Can Give Middle-Class Americans Financial Freedom to Live Off Their Existing Wealth, UBI for the Rest.

It is only in truth that we will sustain prolonged riches. As Americans, we need to look at ourselves honestly for the value we produce for the money we charge. We are better off in the long run, both financially and otherwise, if we invest in a sustainable and global free market. So, let us engage the majority world of Africa and South Asia, as they yearn to work with us. Countries like India 🇮🇳, Nepal 🇳🇵, Nigeria 🇳🇬, Kenya 🇰🇪, Uganda 🇺🇬, Tanzania 🇹🇿, Egypt 🇪🇬, Algeria 🇩🇿, and Ethiopia 🇪🇹 can be great allies to the US 🇺🇸 if we invest in their education and integration with the US economy.

Key Takeaways

• Global Talent Development: With access to online learning tools and platforms, Gen Z developers, designers, and entrepreneurs from regions like Africa and South Asia can replicate the success of US graduates.
• Bridging Educational Gaps: By offering AI-driven onboarding programs, LD Talent helps global talent quickly acquire skills and knowledge comparable to Western counterparts, particularly in tech.
• The Importance of Networks: Success in the US is often driven by networks, and LD Talent leverages its US-based network to help majority-world talent succeed in high-demand fields.
• Investing in Allies: Countries like India 🇮🇳, Nigeria 🇳🇬, and others can become great allies to the US 🇺🇸 if we invest in their education and integration into the US economy.
• Pro-America Perspective: This approach supports American values of capitalism, meritocracy, and equal opportunity, aiming to create a diverse global workforce and immigrant pool that benefits the US economy, especially as a global balance of power and wealth develops.
• Free up American Time for Research & Creativity: This will inspire those at home and abroad, lowering costs enough to enable a UBI-based investment program that aims to free up diverse Americans’ time for cutting-edge research and creativity.