Scholar turned Duolingo chief Luis von Ahn tackles language tests

At a critical juncture in Luis von Ahn’s life – the point that would determine whether he would study in the US, which would set him on a trajectory to founding the world’s largest language teaching platform – he came close to not bothering.

Years before he got tenure as an assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science or achieved entrepreneurial success, Dr von Ahn was just a normal Guatemalan teenager who did not relish the prospect of taking a logistically annoying English test.

“I was not that set on doing it,” he said. “You have to make appointments weeks in advance; you have to travel.”

Now, the Duolingo founder wants to make the decision easier for students in his shoes today. He is tackling a part of the sector that has changed little since his own university days: the global English testing market.

Speaking to Times Higher Education, Dr von Ahn was blunt. “The system is crazy...billions of dollars are spent by people certifying that they know English.”

Currently, big testing companies provide an on-site test for about $300 (£260). Duolingo slashes the cost to $50 – a big difference to students from the Global South, where hundreds of dollars can equal a month’s pay.

While he conceded that the cost of studying abroad is “astronomically more” than a one-off testing fee, Dr von Ahn said that the “real differentiator” between Duolingo’s test and others is convenience. By eliminating the lengthy planning and travel for students, his company can significantly increase the number of students considering overseas destinations, he argued.

What about concerns that online testing fuels plagiarism? Dr von Ahn was sceptical, pointing out that proctoring from thousands of miles away may, in fact, make testing more honest. Having grown up in Guatemala, he has seen how easy it is to cheat when you can bribe local proctors.

Universities appear to be buying it. Already, more than 4,000 of them accept the test. In the US, 88 per cent of international students go to a programme that accepts it. Uptake in the UK, Canada and Australia is lower, because of regulations. But Dr von Ahn was optimistic it will improve.

With just under 50 million active monthly users and worth $3.16 billion, Duolingo still makes the bulk of its income from subscriptions and advertising linked to its language courses. Covid has driven business, too. In the second quarter of 2022, the company reported $97.5 million in bookings – a year-on-year increase of 51 per cent.

But Dr von Ahn was not complacent about growth. He viewed the fate of other edtech providers, which figure out how to sell their product and “stop making it better [but instead] spend all their time just marketing it”, as a cautionary tale.

Already, Dr von Ahn believes that Duolingo’s lessons may be slipping behind the times. At two-and-a-half minutes on average, they are “great” if you are targeting millennials, but “too long” for Gen Z. His team’s next task? Getting lessons down to 30 seconds.

“Mobile phones have a big, big problem, and that is, they come with TikTok, they come with Instagram…things built to be addictive and not particularly educational…We need to deliver education in a way that’s compatible with this reality,” he said.

While the academic in him comes through in his self-reflection and criticism, there are moments when Dr von Ahn sounds more like a Silicon Valley prophet. Although he placed Duolingo a notch below a one-on-one human tutor, that may change.

“In a few years, we will be able to deliver education on a phone that’s better than or as good as a human tutor. And then we’re going to have to figure out what is the real place for formal education,” he said.

Still, he was emphatic that he isn’t among the digirati who make “grandiose” claims about the death of bricks-and-mortar universities – and he wouldn’t want to.

“Our goal is not to substitute formal language education,” he said.

Personally, though, Dr von Ahn does not appear to be headed back to the classroom. While he is affiliated with Carnegie Mellon, he is not about to return to academia full-time. He looked back at a problematic tenure system and a culture pushing scholars to “publish more and more”, when much of his time was spent writing grant applications.

“I had to spend a year to get an amount of funding that I now consider peanuts,” he reflected.

These days, he is doing much more business than academic work, but Carnegie Mellon remains close, both physically – the campus is a 30-minute walk from his offices – and in his team.

Dr von Ahn’s co-founder and business partner, Severin Hacker, began as his PhD student. He described Dr Hacker as “Mr Spock, a very logical guy” who counters his emotional decision-making. Today, the company continues to hire PhD students, many of them in computer sciences and languages, with much of the talent coming from outside the US.

But, for a technology leader, Dr von Ahn made a strong case for humanities. He says he would probably steer his children – if he were to have any – away from STEM fields.

“I’ve seen the latest AI models and they’re very good…In my lifetime…more likely in my children’s lifetime, I don’t think we’re going to need that many engineers, I think AI is going to do it.”

pola.lem@timeshighereducation.com