The original note, as written at the time
A special kind of campus that youth apply to go to on merit. They are given free accommodation, living allowance and utilities in exchange for the documentation of their ideas. Each meriter can choose how to spend their time while on the campus. All that is required is that they show growth of their career paths, whatever that may be. Each participant is given only three years at this place, non-renewable.
Ongoing development
A campus that young people apply to on merit. They get free accommodation, a living allowance and utilities in exchange for documenting their ideas. Each resident chooses how to spend their time; the only requirement is that they show growth in their career path, whatever that is. Three years each, non-renewable.
The three years is the whole design and everything else follows from it. A residency without a term becomes a comfortable institution; a residency with a term and no renewal produces urgency without panic, because there is enough time to fail once and not enough to drift.
Paying people to document their ideas rather than to produce a deliverable is the second good decision. Deliverables can be specified in advance, which means they can be faked in advance. Growth cannot. So the assessment has to be a portfolio review by people who know the field, looking at a body of work rather than a milestone.
The non-renewable rule is what keeps the campus honest, and it is also the hardest thing to defend politically. Every cohort will contain three or four people whose work is genuinely not finished, and turning them out is the price of not becoming a club.
The risk is that it selects for the already-connected, because a merit application is itself a skill. The fix is not lower standards but a wider net: applications by nomination from schools and workplaces as well as by submission.
Three years, free, on condition that you can show what you did. That is a small enough intervention to be tried.