“What the Qing emperor did is he abolished the test. Then suddenly, all the elites in China lost the hope to move up the hierarchy. They went up to protest and overthrow the government. That's the end of Qing dynasty, basically.”

high schools were after shutdown. All the students, they self-learned by themselves. They never went to school.

One conclusion of your book is that the high-stakes exam is here to stay. There's nothing like taking something away to make people recognize its importance. They felt that the exam was fair and it allowed for social mobility based on merit.

I took AP exams at Nutrition High School. Because the AP test was well defined, teachers could teach for the test and students could master the material. Recently, some American high schools have revolted and stopped offering AP classes. How do you feel about the loss of accountability versus the…

What is education before college from K to 12? What is the best way to select students into college? So these are two separate questions. So one is about what you should learn. We don't know actually. Schools were created 200 years ago. We haven't changed it much, how we teach, how we test…

College tuition costs have exceeded inflation for decades, yet access to information is becoming nearly free. That would put a lot of pressure on schools because when you lose your monopoly, the moat is gone.