My motivation for doing my version of Hack Higher Ed is manifold but here is the biggest:
We must change the current US higher education system which, because of price cutting of public education and the soaring costs of private education, is increasingly aimed at the "global 1%" (the wealthiest top tier of the world) and the "intellectual 1%" (that subset of smart students who are unfailingly studious, do great on tests, don't question authority, and earn the kind of perfect records that get you into college today). As I note in all my lectures, the current average GPA of a student entering the Univeristy of California at Irvine is 4.1 on a 4.0 scale--and they have perfect test scores, scads of AP classes, tons of community service to boot: I do not want to live in a society that expects young people to be that perfect and then has the audacity to tell them they have to "learn to fail" and "take risks": no, we have set up a system where even a tiny mis-step is disaster.