The evidence
Free learning already exists. It was never enough.
Everything on this page is either sourced to published research or labelled as our own projection. Where we have no evidence, we say so — that is what section six is for.
01 / The gap
Some of the best teaching on earth is already free. Nobody has ever been hired on a watch history.
A teenager in a Mumbai slum can take the same course as one at MIT — the same lectures, the same problems, the same hours put in. Only one of them ends up with a credential anyone will accept. The knowledge is identical; the recognition is not, and it is the recognition that changes the life.
Nearly two-thirds of American adults hold no bachelor’s degree, and in most of the world the share is far higher. The content problem was solved a decade ago. The proof problem was not.
Learners without institutions
Capable, self-taught, and invisible to every employer’s filter.
Workers changing trade
Skills earned on the job that no certificate anywhere records.
The displaced
People whose paperwork was left behind, or never issued at all.
02 / What already failed
Every existing option solves half the problem.
Free video, paid certificates, degrees, badges — each covers part of the gap and leaves the rest wide open.
| Option | What works | What fails |
|---|---|---|
| Free courses | Reach everyone, cost nothing | Leave no proof behind at all |
| Paid certificates | Carry some weight | Cost money the learner does not have, and belong to the issuer |
| Degrees | Open doors worldwide | Gated by geography, price and time |
| Platform badges | Easy to earn and share | Disappear with the company that issued them |
| Alexandria | Free, portable and independently verifiable at once — the combination nobody has shipped. Whether it earns recognition is exactly what we cannot yet claim. | |
The missing piece was never content. It was proof that travels.
03 / Employers already tried
They dropped the degree requirement. Almost nothing changed.
Apple, Walmart, General Motors and more than twenty US state governments removed degree requirements from job postings. Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute tracked what happened next across 11,300 large firms over nine years.
Fewer than one in 700 new hires actually benefited — about 97,000 people out of 77 million hires in 2023. Not for lack of will, but because nothing replaced the degree as a signal an employer could trust.
The same study found that where skills-based hiring did take hold, the outcomes were better, not worse.
Fewer than 1 in 700
new hires actually benefited when employers dropped degree requirements
About 97,000 workers out of 77 million hires in 2023.
+25%
average salary increase for workers hired without a degree, where it did take hold
+10 pts
higher retention than colleagues who held degrees
The appetite is proven and the mobility is measured. The missing piece is proof an employer can check.
Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work with the Burning Glass Institute, February 2024 — 11,300 large US firms, 2014–2023. Read the study. All three figures above come from this one piece of research, not from three converging ones.
04 / Theory of change
Philanthropy starts it. Employers sustain it.
A free commons needs a funding model that does not depend on being funded forever. Grant capital opens it; the people who get commercial value out of it keep it open.
- 01Grantfunds the build and the free tier
- 02Platformfree learning and assessment, any device
- 03Credentialsportable proof a learner owns outright
- 04Employerspay to hire on verified skill
- 05Sustainedearned revenue funds the commons
05 / What we are aiming at
Projections, not resultsOur targets for 2031.
These come from our own bottom-up model built on unit drivers, not market-share guesses. No learner is on the platform yet, so treat every number below as an objective we expect to be held to.
6M
learners, at no cost to any of them
Projection
1.9M
credentials issued per year
Projection
40%
of earned revenue goes to the educators who create the skills
Our policy
96%
of costs met by earned revenue, never by learners
Projection
Alexandria’s own bottom-up model, July 2026, base case — built from unit drivers rather than market share. Nobody is on the platform yet, so these are objectives we expect to be held to, not results.
06 / What we do not know
The two things that could still make this fail.
That employers will pay for verified skill
The research says they want to hire this way. It does not prove they will buy the infrastructure that lets them. Finding out is the purpose of this stage.
That the credential earns real recognition
A credential is only worth what people accept it for. No independent validity study has been completed. When one is, we publish it — including negative results.
- Reach
- Learners, geographies and languages. Reported quarterly.
- Outcomes
- Credentials issued, hires made, earnings unlocked.
- Rigour
- Independent validity studies, published openly — including the ones that go against us.
Open source, open data, open method. Anyone can check our claims — including you, and including the credential itself.
Sources and method
- Skills-based hiring
- Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work with the Burning Glass Institute, 12 February 2024 (Joseph Fuller): 11,300 large US firms, 2014–2023. Fewer than 1 in 700 new hires benefited; where it did take hold, pay rose 25% and retention ran 10 points higher. Source
- Degree attainment
- US Census Bureau educational attainment: 37.7% of Americans aged 25 and over hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, leaving 62.3% who do not. Source
- Projections
- Alexandria’s own bottom-up model, July 2026 — built from unit drivers, not market share. Base case throughout. Pre-launch, with no external users.
- Educator revenue share
- 40% of earned revenue is a policy of ours, not a forecast. We have deliberately not published modelled educator earnings: nobody has earned anything here yet, and a projection shaped like an income claim is not something a pre-launch company should put in front of people deciding how to spend their time.
- Examination data
- National Testing Agency, India, 2025: NEET-UG 22.76 lakh registered, JEE Main 15.4 lakh across two sessions. Source
“We have plenty of free content. We do not have free recognition.”
That is the whole thesis. The app is free, the code is open, and the alpha is filling up in groups.