Next mon­th’s edi­tion of Fast Com­pa­ny (avail­able online now) brings you a big, glow­ing trib­ute to TED and its TED Talks. It’s a love­fest in print, the kind that sells mag­a­zines. And, along the way, Anya Kamenetz (author of DIY U) makes some big claims for TED. Let me start with this one:

I would go so far as to argue that [TED’s] cre­at­ing a new Har­vard — the first new top-pres­tige edu­ca­tion brand in more than 100 years.

Of course TED does­n’t look like a reg­u­lar Ivy League col­lege. It does­n’t have any build­ings; it does­n’t grant degrees. It does­n’t have singing groups or secret soci­eties, and as far as I know it has­n’t inspired any strange drink­ing games.

Still, if you were start­ing a top uni­ver­si­ty today, what would it look like? You would start by gath­er­ing the very best minds from around the world, from every dis­ci­pline. Since we’re liv­ing in an age of abun­dant, not scarce, infor­ma­tion, you’d curate the lec­tures care­ful­ly, with a focus on the new and orig­i­nal, rather than offer a course on every pos­si­ble top­ic. You’d cre­ate a sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic mod­el by focus­ing on tech­no­log­i­cal rather than phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture, and by get­ting peo­ple of means to pay for a spe­cial­ized expe­ri­ence. You’d also con­struct a robust net­work so peo­ple could access resources when­ev­er and from wher­ev­er they like, and you’d give them the tools to col­lab­o­rate beyond the lec­ture hall. Why not ful­fill the uni­ver­si­ty’s mil­len­ni­um-old mis­sion by shar­ing ideas as freely and as wide­ly as pos­si­ble?

TED, the new Har­vard. The new uni­ver­si­ty. It’s a nice idea … until you think about it for a few moments. Will watch­ing 18 minute lec­tures – ones that bare­ly scratch the sur­face of an expert’s knowl­edge – real­ly teach you much? And when the 18 min­utes are over, will the experts stick around and help you become a crit­i­cal thinker, which is the main under­tak­ing of the mod­ern uni­ver­si­ty after all? (Will they assign the papers where you grap­ple with the dif­fi­cult ideas? Will they make sure your argu­ments are sound? That your writ­ing is lucid? Or will they even expand on their brief lec­tures and teach you some­thing in-depth?) Nope, you’ll get none of that. The experts will give their 18 minute talks, and then they’re gone. Ulti­mate­ly, Kamenetz seems to know she’s over­reach­ing. She even­tu­al­ly cir­cles around to say, “Sure, these talks have their lim­its as an edu­ca­tion­al medi­um. An 18-minute pre­sen­ta­tion, no mat­ter how expert, can’t accom­mo­date any­thing over­ly the­o­ret­i­cal or tech­ni­cal — the for­mat is more con­ge­nial to Freako­nom­ics than eco­nom­ics.” And so the whole ini­tial, catchy premise falls apart. (Mau­ra John­ston right­ly makes this point too, among oth­er good ones, in her must-read reac­tion to the “breath­less” Fast Com­pa­ny arti­cle.)

I have no beef with TED. Quite the con­trary, I’m a big fan of their open lec­tures. (Get the full list here.) And you can’t blame TED when oth­ers read too much into what they do. But, echo­ing points made last week, I do have an issue with com­men­ta­tors reduc­ing edu­ca­tion to watch­ing TV. So a quick request to the “edupunks” and “edupre­neurs” out there. As you’re democ­ra­tiz­ing edu­ca­tion and low­er­ing tuition through tech­nol­o­gy, could you make sure that what­ev­er you’re final­ly offer­ing is an edu­ca­tion in more than mere name? You feel me?

NOTE: Anya Kamenetz, the author of the Fast Com­pa­ny arti­cle, offers a response in the com­ments below. In fair­ness to her, please give them a read. We also have a lit­tle fol­low up.