There's a big buzz up the street from me here in New Haven. As the Yale Daily News reports, a few weeks ago Yale School of Management Dean Joel Podolny switched from Blackberry to iPhone. Then he put his Woodbridge, CT home on the market. Wednesday, he announced he was leaving Yale University and heading to Apple to found Apple University. In academia where moves from the mother ship are planned out years in advance, this is as unnerving as it is swift.

"Utter shock gripped the School of Management on Wednesday morning as the announcement left the community surprised, hurt and generally anxious." - Yale Daily News

Granted, Apple is corporately cool with sleek Macs, iPods, iPhones and Steve Jobs, but Yale is no slouch organization either. A Yale alum has been on the Democratic or Republican ticket in every U.S. Presidential election between 1972 and 2004. If that wasn't enough, it's Yale, not Apple, that has an annual "Sex Week." Departures from Yale are accompanied by good reasons--though none is currently forthcoming.

So, what is Apple University? Adam Jones wrote in London's Financial Times "The first rule of Apple University - don't talk about it." The Wall Street Journal quizzed Apple's PR apparatchik but got no answer. The Journal does speculate Apple University could be along the lines of Hamburger University or Pixar University and specialize in corporate training.

My personal opinion is you need to look at Apple's embrace of education through the iTunes Store--specifically iTunes U. Maybe Apple is ready to follow through on one of the earliest promises of home computing, the democratization of higher education. Who better than Steve Jobs and Joel Podolny to move a sophisticated and highly skilled education system off ivy covered campuses and directly to the home? Apple has leveraged technology to move the Earth before. I suspect they're doing it again.