Beyond What’s Next: Building Education’s Last Step

An edtech entrepreneur argues that we won’t win by making yesterday’s system a little bit better.

GUEST COLUMN | by Gary Hensley

KULPREYA CHAICHATPORNSUK

Most innovators ask, “What’s next?” Palmer Luckey asked, “What’s the last step?”

Luckey, the founder of Oculus and later the defense technology company Anduril, didn’t set out to improve gaming slightly. As detailed in a 2024 Tablet article, he was obsessed with skipping past incremental improvements to reach the inevitable future: fully immersive virtual reality. He wasn’t looking to make screens better; he wanted to make them obsolete.

That mindset — asking not just “what’s next” but “what’s the last step” — built Oculus and changed entire industries.

Education stands at a similar crossroads today. For decades, we’ve been asking “what’s next” — layering on new technologies, improving access, tweaking curricula. But maybe it’s time to ask a different question: What’s the last step?

‘For decades, we’ve been asking “what’s next” — layering on new technologies, improving access, tweaking curricula. But maybe it’s time to ask a different question: What’s the last step?’

If we could design the ultimate learning system — not the next version, but the final one — what would it look like?

The Danger of Incremental Thinking

Education loves iteration.

New devices, new dashboards, new strategies to boost test scores — but fundamentally, the system itself stays the same. Students move through fixed grade levels, bound by rigid schedules and outdated assessments.

It’s as if we’re busy improving landlines while the rest of the world has moved to smartphones.

Incremental improvements aren’t enough anymore. The world students are entering is evolving too quickly for slow, cautious upgrades. If we continue thinking small, we risk preparing kids for a world that no longer exists by the time they graduate.

To truly serve learners, we have to stop polishing the past and start building the future.

Preparing for a Future We Can’t Fully See

Education’s original mission was to prepare students for the workforce and society they would enter. That mission hasn’t changed — but the context has.

Today, the workforce isn’t a static destination. It’s a rapidly shifting landscape of emerging industries, AI-driven automation, and evolving human-machine collaboration.

Skills that seem essential today could be obsolete in just a few years.

According to Stanford’s 2024 AI Index, large language models doubled their performance on major benchmarks in just six months — a staggering rate of advancement. If we drew up a skills roadmap today, it would likely be outdated within a year.

This question feels even more personal to me now.

My daughter is finishing kindergarten.

I find myself wondering: What exactly is the system preparing her for?

When she graduates 12 years from now, AI will look nothing like it does today. The jobs that exist then may not even be imagined yet.

Will the skills she’s acquiring today — memorization, standardized test-taking — help her thrive in that reality?

Or will we have failed her by clinging to a system designed for a slower, more predictable world?

To meet the challenge, education must shift from teaching static knowledge to nurturing dynamic capabilities:

• Adaptability
• Critical thinking
• Digital literacy
• Collaboration across cultures and platforms
• Creativity and problem-solving in ambiguous environments

The goal isn’t just to prepare students for their first job.

It’s to prepare them for a lifetime of reinvention.

Reimagining the Endgame

So what is the “last step” for education?

Maybe it’s a system where learning is truly personalized and continuous, powered by AI tutors that adapt in real time.

Maybe it’s a system where credentials are based on demonstrated mastery, not seat time.

Maybe it’s one where traditional institutions are just one part of a broader, more flexible learning ecosystem.

The point is: we won’t reach that future by making yesterday’s system a little bit better.

Just as Palmer Luckey wasn’t trying to make monitors 10% better — he was trying to make them irrelevant — we need bold thinkers in education who are willing to leap forward, not tiptoe.

It’s time for education leaders, policymakers, technologists, and entrepreneurs to stop asking “how do we improve what exists?” and start asking “what is the future we need to build — and how do we start building it today?”

Conclusion: A Call to Courage

Change at this scale isn’t easy. It’s uncomfortable. It challenges legacy structures and vested interests.

But we owe it to our students — to my daughter, to every kindergartener finishing school this year — to be bold.

We need to stop optimizing for the next test score and start architecting for the next century.

We need to design education not just for what’s coming next year, but for the world that will exist when today’s five-year-olds are leading it.

The best innovators don’t just imagine the next step.

They build toward the last step.

It’s time education does the same.

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NOTE :: “American Vulcan: Palmer Luckey, Anduril, and the Defense of American Power,” Tablet Magazine, 2024. Link to article

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Gary Hensley is a serial entrepreneur and education technology innovator focused on building the future of learning in an AI-driven world. Connect with Gary on LinkedIn.

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