The University that pays you to learn
And what it should change about how you hire, develop, and sell.
If you had to design your own education from scratch, using only what you know now as a founder, operator or investor…
Would it look anything like your degree did?
Most of us were trained to memorize answers, sit still, and reproduce the “right” solution from the textbook. We got good at guessing what the examiner wanted. Then we graduated into a world that doesn’t hand out marks for following instructions. It pays for solved problems.
James Dyson looked at that gap and decided complaining about it was a waste of time. So he built his own university.
The university that pays you to learn
In 2017, the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology took in its first cohort: forty-four undergraduates.
No tuition.
No debt.
No four-year pause from reality.
Instead, students work three days a week on real Dyson research projects alongside Dyson engineers. The other two days, they study engineering. They do this forty-seven weeks a year, for four years.
Compared to a traditional twenty-two week academic year and three-year degree, Dyson estimates his students receive roughly two and a half times the teaching. But it’s not just the volume that’s different. It’s the nature of the work.
They are encouraged to think against the grain. To question, to redesign, to be wrong, and to be corrected in the context of live products that are heading to market. Their “homework” is not a problem set that disappears into a folder. Their work turns into machines on shelves, in customers’ homes, generating real revenue.
They are paid a proper salary. They graduate with four years of experience, products on their CV, and no student debt. Dyson doesn’t lock them in with golden handcuffs. They are free to leave. The only thing he’s betting on is that someone who has had that kind of apprenticeship will want to keep doing hard, interesting work that customers actually buy.
By graduation, they’re not just qualified on paper; they’re professionals with real track records of building things people actually buy.
One email that says it all
One day in October 2020, Dyson received an email from William Thoburn.
Good morning James,
Thank you for your praise and thank you for starting the Institute in 2017 − I’m having a fantastic time!
Here is a brief summary of my achievements this year:
Averaged a 1st in my first-year studies for a University of Warwick Engineering degree.
Designed and built an automated system for the Dyson Motors Advanced Test Systems and Validation team.
Completed LabView Core 1 and 2 certifications.
Became an AWS certified Cloud Practitioner, whilst deploying a cost saving improvement to the Dyson cloud infrastructure − at Dyson’s Bristol office.
Learnt about rotor dynamics and used CAD to construct a visualisation rig whilst working in the Dyson Motors’ Mechanical team.
Pitched and led a summer series project on capturing microplastics from our waterways which won the ‘Most Linked Project to the UN Sustainable Development Goals’ award.
All the best
William Thoburn
Undergraduate Engineer
The Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology
Most corporate “graduate programs” would struggle to match that density of real output over three years.
The point is not that William is a genius. The point is that the system he’s in is designed for doing, not knowing. It assumes young people can handle real responsibility far earlier than we typically give it to them. And it asks to be judged on evidence: what did you actually build and improve that matters to customers or the business?
What this means for you
You’re not going to start your own university. You don’t need to.
But you are already designing a learning system, whether you’re conscious of it or not.
If your company runs on status meetings, abstract “training,” and slide decks, you’re running a knowledge-retention system. People get better at talking. Not necessarily better at building, launching, and selling.
Dyson’s Institute suggests a different set of defaults:
Put people on real, revenue-linked problems as early as possible.
Make learning inseparable from shipping and selling to real customers or internal buyers.
Increase the intensity: longer seasons of focused work on one domain, with clear commercial targets.
Judge people by the trail of things they’ve built and sold, not just the brands on their CV.
You probably already have people on your team who would thrive under that kind of pressure and clarity.
On Monday, do this
Pick one important problem in your business that has been stuck for at least ninety days.
Not a vague aspiration. A real, concrete problem with a revenue or customer outcome.
“Reduce cloud spend by 20% with at least one internal stakeholder who has to approve it.”
“Close three design-partner customers for the new product.”
“Increase win-rate by 10 percentage points on deals over $100k.”
Now:
Choose one or two high-upside people.
For the next 6–12 weeks, give them a “mini-Dyson Institute”:
2–3 days a week protected to work on that problem.
1 day a week to study everything connected to it: internal data, external case studies, books, talks, calls with people who’ve already sold this kind of thing.
Replace your usual update meeting with a single question:
“What did we ship or sell this week, and what did we learn?”
At the end of that block, their “exam” is simple: is the problem solved or meaningfully closer to solved? What portfolio of things did they actually ship or sell?
If you repeat that experiment a few times a year, you won’t just have better projects. You’ll have your own version of the Dyson Institute inside your company: a place where capable people learn by being trusted with real problems, and judged by the things they build that actually work and the customers who prove it with money.
If this was forwarded to you
I’m Harsh. I build, sell and invest in businesses. I also read books to keep getting better. I send one story each Sunday for founders and senior operators who want useful ideas to win in business and life.
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I currently help build Ideals Virtual Data Rooms, Happy Ratio, the M&A Community, and Marcellus Investment Managers.
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Great, insightful