“Never stop learning” is a time-honored mantra, encouraging each of us to expand our knowledge set, discover new ways of thinking and evolve into something better.
Having access to the right information, the right training tools, the right schools are all critical factors in gaining a new skill and bettering one’s situation. However, if learners don’t have the funds necessary to pay for this access, or if they aren’t physically near — or even in the same country as — one of these sites, their options for improvement are limited.
Marco Antonio Fernández, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of butic, wants to change that.
“I have worked in the education industry for the past 20 years,” notes Fernández. “I was employed in a Spanish school that taught through a classic model. When a student wanted to practice outside of class, they had to come to the school and find an available workstation.” However, these systems were used for other classes, so the school could not guarantee that a given workstation would be available for students when they needed it.
To make education more convenient — and innovative — Fernández envisioned a new model.
Rather than relying so heavily on physical buildings and workstations, he wanted to transition to a more virtual strategy. “Forget about hardware,” he continues. “Forget about software licenses. I wanted a school where with your tuition, you got a virtual, fully-licensed workspace.”
Not only would this new school, butic, make it easier to learn, but it would also lower the barrier to entry for students across the globe. Particularly, since the types of courses the school offers — architecture, engineering, construction and technology — demand a robust operating environment, which isn’t always the most affordable.
“We do not teach simple things,” adds Fernández. “This type of work needs a lot of processor, a lot of memory, a high-end graphic card. But there is a big part of the world where you can’t assume that a student is going to have the necessary resources. Just paying tuition can be difficult, let alone paying several thousand dollars for a high-end workstation with advanced graphics.”
With a firm vision in place, Fernández began looking for help to make this new school a reality.