

Cornell NYC Tech Campus gets $133 Million from co-founder of Qualcomm - pGrabber
http://cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2013/04/22/two-cornell-alumni-donate-133-million-tech-campus-bloomberg-announce

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rollo_tommasi
It'd be better for this money to go to strengthen technical education (and
more importantly, re-educution) in the CUNY system rather than to burnish yet
another elites-only institution, but training and re-training ordinary workers
isn't quite as flashy or sexy a cause.

~~~
spindritf
> It'd be better for this money to go to strengthen technical education (and
> more importantly, re-educution) in the CUNY system

It's very difficult to say that with any level of certainty -- The Null
Hypothesis in Education is Hard to Disprove
[http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/the-null-hypothesis-in-
educa...](http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/the-null-hypothesis-in-education-is-
hard-to-disprove/)

~~~
gu
There is no correlation between the blog comment you linked to and the
statement you're quoting. Your comment boils down to little more than saying
"Not true!"

If you want to make the point that bolstering public education is a wasted
effort, then think of countries like Finland or Norway who have an excellent
public educational system. Go on vacation there, and you'll be surprised, for
instance, how well the average person there speaks English. Now compare this
to the US or the UK where people usually don't bother learning a second
language, and your average shop clerk has a hard enough time communicating in
his mother tongue.

~~~
spindritf
> Your comment boils down to little more than saying "Not true!"

My comment boils down to the same point as the blog post: it's very diffiucult
to show benefits of any educational intervention, especially long-term
benefits. Corollary: it's very hard to be certain that pumping $100M into the
City University will have significant positive results.

> think of countries like Finland or Norway who have an excellent public
> educational system

Finland is somewhat exceptional but European educational systems are otherwise
on par with the American one[1]. Except for the top/prestigious universities
where Americans dominate and only Britons keep up[2].

I both live and vacation in Europe. The popularity of English here has more to
do with Anglosphere's cultural domination than it has with the school system.
If you want anecdotal evidence, English is my second language and I learnt it
primarily from trashy American television on cable and then the Internet.

[1] [http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-
abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-
scores-usa.html)

[2] [http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-
ranki...](http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-
rankings/2012-13/world-ranking)

~~~
eigenvector
Have you looked at the methodology for Times Higher Education rankings? It has
nothing to do with quality of education. It's based on reputation. I went to a
top 20 school that was utterly mediocre and was ranked highly only because of
its research prowess.

America having a lot of prestigious research institutions has nothing to do
with the quality of primary and secondary education in the country. Half of
the PhDs and faculty members in those top American schools got their primary
and secondary education in foreign countries.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
And tertiary, too. Plenty of grad-students in American institutions have their
undergrad degree from some cheaper place abroad.

Hell, some of us Americans have left America to go do degrees and careers
elsewhere, due to its extreme disinvestment in science. One friend of mine to
Montreal and quite possibly Germany for his PhD, me to Israel...

