Leadership | How to build the university that didn’t exist: Lessons from CODE University

think what occurred to me also when I was there was just the way that this felt different.

It didn't feel like a traditional university.

You had open spaces, you had beanbags, whiteboards everywhere, music playing, even a ball pit, which I have to admit I got into.

It looks more like a startup than a university.

And I guess the question is, was that the point? Were you trying to signal right from the start when a student came in or anybody came in, actually, that this is something different? And what were you hoping to create through that, if that's the case?

So with that, as with lots of things, they happened along the way.

And in hindsight, we realized it was exactly the thing we needed.

When we were starting to look for people who would invest in code and help us build the whole thing, which of course needed lots of money, we talked to someone in Berlin who had created a co-working community space called Factory in Berlin.

And we wanted to convince him to support our idea of code and help us build it as an investor.

And when he heard the story, he said, I'm just about to open a second campus of my factory co-working space.

Sounds like your university or what you envision your university to be is exactly what I would like to have as part of this co-working space.

So we moved in with a not yet existing university, moved in into this co-working space.

Our first 88 students that we enrolled in 2017 basically became also members of this co-working space.

And we quickly realized that it's the best environment that students can have for this kind of learning that we envisioned.

Because if you're not focusing on teaching, you don't need a lot of classrooms.

You need lots of spaces for students to work on their projects.

And that is a totally different design, totally different layout that you need.

Lots of smaller rooms, lots of corners that people can occupy for a longer period of time.

And that's basically what a coworking space is.

It's a space for people to gather together, to team up, work on projects, start startups, all this.

And this is very close to the way learning happens at Code.

So it was fate or randomness, but looking back, it has become a core part of their learning experience at Code that this environment is basically a community and co-working space that students can access 24-7, which is not only the place for them to work on their projects and to learn, but it's also a core aspect of this community spirit that they feel like this is their second home, they can be there, they can eat and have fun and have parties, but also study, work together, and More and more, it also becomes an event space because students come up with lots of ideas about events, hackathons, stuff they want to do using the campus.

And so as you described it, it's very lively.

It's very not like a traditional university.

And also professors don't hide behind closed doors.