

Stanford, Duke, Rice, … and Gates? - dhimes
http://chronicle.com/article/Stanford-Duke-Rice-hellip-/46994/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

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yef
No, focus on pre-college education. As funny as it sounds, we don't need
another top-flight university (which would cost billions alone) as much as we
need better education in our local schools.

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TheElder
A few things that would help right away, uniforms and tiers. Three or four
tiers would do. Slow, average, bright. I understand the mixing of students of
different abilities, but I think it does more harm than good.

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unalone
What does more harm than good is the fucking standardization of education, to
the point where we assume that all children learn the same and if one has a
different route to learning he's dull or disabled or disadvantaged. I mean,
yes, he's disadvantaged, but only because the system we're in is so concerned
with _monitoring_ kids and determining who's bright and who's not bright, with
such an ass-backwards system that it very frequently puts the wrong people in
the wrong places.

When I was seventeen years old, I took the best class of my life. It was a
science fiction/fantasy literature class elective, half a year long. I'd had
the teacher the year before for AP English, and I assumed that perhaps the
class might be as good if I didn't have to deal with the out-and-out retards
that came with the subject of science fiction. We had the violent kids who
fantasized about being evil dictators, the obsessives who didn't know when to
shut their mouths... All the "special" kids who I'd stopped seeing in the
eighth grade when it was determined I was better than them and shouldn't have
to spend my time dealing with them. (Like dealing with the typical honors
student is any less frustrating.)

Instead, our teacher barged ahead from the first day, without stopping for
anybody or anything. The stuff he was teaching was alien to _all_ of us:
Propp's hierarchy for fairy tales was first on the list. He'd give us a book
and a set of short stories a week and expect us to finish it all. While we
read perhaps eight books all year in my IB English class, we got to at least
ten in the sci-fi course, all in half a year, and we weren't dealing with
bullshit sci-fi, we were dealing with the stuff that's complex and heavy
enough to qualify as Serious Literature in my book.

How he achieved it: He had no lesson plans, he gave no tests, he did nothing
but talk, using the things we were reading as a frame of reference. He'd do
research so that he knew more than any of us (he crammed for Asimov, who I
know inside and out, and came up with things I hadn't heard of before), and
everybody just _talked_. There was no monitoring, no belittling, no talking
down, just an hour-long conversation every day, with four big projects that
determined our grade - but the projects were freeform; we could decide how to
handle them. I wrote prose and poetry; three kids made a documentary; a bunch
of the kids I'd detested went into Garry's Mod and recorded a pantomime; other
kids made large cardboard replicas of alien figures and devised their own SF
worlds.

Again, these were not honors kids. They were kids I'd thought were too stupid
to read. But they handled the courseload as well as anybody, and left with a
pretty hardcore understanding of how sci-fi works.

I have never had much success in school. I'm the kid who got placed in all
honors courses because teachers realized I was a faster learner than their
other students, but who spent his time in school refusing to get much
schoolwork done. Before I discovered art school, which cared more for my
portfolio than for my GPA, I was at a good public school, which in the minds
of friends going to good private schools was a shithole. I endured a year of
snide comments and mockery from people I'd gotten along with who were more-
than-delighted to remind me that society had determined my "place" was in a
public school with no famous alumni. Now that I've transferred to an excellent
art school, all the comments are something along the lines of "Can I have a
tall latte with milk?", which was funny about twenty years ago.

I find it unbearably offensive that society makes attempts to "rank" students.
Yes, people are different, and learn differently, but those are _strengths_
unless decided otherwise. I know a lot of people whose lives were ruined by
well-meaning administrators who assumed children were shitty brats who needed
disciplining and straightening out. What would help right away was a system
that made an attempt to welcome diversity, not just in appearance (seriously,
screw uniforms, they're fixing the wrong problem) but in character and style.

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lliiffee
Fortunately, while all the research I've seen has suggested that it is
critical to have different "tracks" for different students, it has also
suggested that there is no need for the teachers/administrators to decide what
track each student goes in. The results are actually _better_ if you let the
students and parents decide.

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ctbarna
My high school was one funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and we
tried to limit tracking as much as possible. For the first two years, there is
absolutely no tracking. The idea is that the faster learners will help their
slower peers who benefit from more interaction with their friends.
Anecdotally, it seemed to work rather well but required students to initially
be motivated to learn. My school never really had a problem with that because
students applied to the school and could opt out of the application process
without their parents knowing.

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stevejohnson
Anecdotally, I was always annoyed when I was dumped into a class with the slow
kids and had to help them catch up while I was bored out of my mind. The 'no
child left behind' mentality has slowed a lot of kids down instead of letting
them learn enough to keep them interested in the material.

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stuff4ben
Intriguing! I wonder how a student from Gates U. would be accepted in the job
market? Would there be a bias like there is today towards technical schools
like ITT Tech and others? Or would the clout of Gates be enough to overcome
that? I think it would be a great way to preserve the Bill Gates legacy though
which might appeal him.

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joshfinnie
Now that you mention it, it does sound like an glorified trade (tech) school.
I think the idea of having people with phd's teach at university is more for
the critical thinking one gets out of class and not so much for their
knowledge. When you get to the phd level, you are very specialized anyways and
probably forgot most of intro to circuits (though you have to teach it
anyways). University gives students the knowledge to think on their own, not
sure you'd get that from Gates U.

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gaius
Microsoft Research suggests that Gates is perfectly well aware of the value of
traditional academia.

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ggchappell
There are some fine ideas here, but the writer doesn't really seem to
understand money.

> There would be no tenure, obviously. I assume you never thought it was a
> good idea at Microsoft —why have it here?

I have problems with the tenure system myself, despite _having_ tenure at a
university. However, we must realize that it's not just some silly idea
someone dreamed up one day. Tenure has real economic value to those who get
it. The standard deal for professors at many universities is somewhat low pay,
made up for by serious job security. Thus, tenure is, _in part_ , a way of
saving a university money.

So if you throw out tenure, and you want to get something other than bottom-
of-the-barrel teaching, then you need to pay people more.

But the writer says:

> Who would work at Gates University? Anyone who could do a great job. Maybe
> professors will have Ph.D.'s, maybe they won't. If a really smart person
> drops out of college, founds a phenomenally successful business, and decides
> to turn toward education as a way of giving back, he or she would be welcome
> to apply for a job.

So, not only have you put yourself in a position of having to pay people more,
you also want to get away from people who just like to teach, and instead hire
people who have proven themselves to be _very good at making money_. Well, go
right ahead, but understand that these people are going to require enormous
salaries. Where is that money going to come from?

> For-profit universities, meanwhile, are surging into the online market. Some
> provide valuable services, while others are ripping off students and
> taxpayers. But on some level they all want to provide as good an education
> as necessary for as much tuition as possible. Gates University would provide
> as good an education as possible for as much tuition as necessary, ....

And that's going to be an awful lot.

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caffeine
I'd like to see Gates U. really be "Informal U." Experts in various areas
organize little seminars of variable lengths and talk about whatever they want
to talk about. Students find people who know what they want to learn, and ask
them to teach it.

Each professor publicizes the list of reading you need to really understand
before you can work with them - and informally organize a discussion group for
the students they know are working through it. So you're forced to plan in
advance, you spend time reading the fundamentals of a field, discuss it with
people, and perhaps write something to show you know what you're doing, before
the prof. lets you in on his project.

You plan your sequence of projects in order to get a) recommendations from
interesting people and b) an interesting sequence of reading and work that
fits together well. All the project work is either a) commissioned by industry
or b) destined for direct publication. Ideally, most students do a bit of
both.

This is College by UROP - you work with a few professors every year on
projects, and you need their recommendation to progress into the following
year. In your final year, you do a serious piece of independent work, perhaps
with others. The referees you've had form a committee who judge your work.
Quite simply, it needs to be published in a quality journal, or sold to
industry, in order for you to graduate (i.e. you actually have to _do_
something useful for _somebody_ )

(edit: I just noticed this is basically just graduate school. Sooo, yeah ...
Gates U. should be grad school for undergrads.)

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mnemonicsloth
_High-quality college credentials are the key to opportunity in the modern
economy._

Really?

I don't suppose it can be argued that they are. But it's far from clear that
they should be, or even will be.

The field of post-secondary education is ripe with opportunities for new
methods and technology. It's sad that someone tasked with studying this state
of affairs can do no better than the stultified credentialism and admissions-
essay mindset that afflicts the present system.

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Alex3917
Not only does the author have no understanding of educational theory, I don't
think they have any actual understanding of Bill Gates either. As if he would
stop trying to cure malaria to start some some U.S. college.

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arfrank
I just read the article and I don't recall seeing him saying anything
specifically about where it would go. He alludes to Seattle, and it is
apparent that his words do lend to a US based institution, whats to say that
Gates shouldn't do this somewhere else. Why not build it somewhere where its
10X cheaper to build and run, then do the research he's already funding "in
house" as competition to the other researchers.

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hughprime
While I'd like to see a new, well-funded private university show up
(preferably in Portland) the specific ideas here seem to be a combination of
"vague" and "bad". Frinstance:

"Nor would you sequester faculty members into departments organized around
academic disciplines... Gates's programs would cross traditional disciplines,
organized around goals for what students need to learn."

What does that mean, exactly, in practice?

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dhimes
You could, for instance, combine the teaching of physics with calculus, or
linear algebra with computer programming, all integrated into one badass class
with coordinated assignments.

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Locke1689
This seems to be a university with a focus on the education of undergraduates.
However, that is not the primary (maybe not even secondary) purpose of most
universities. Most top universities in the US are research institutions and
their professors are hired for their expertise in their field, not their
teaching skills. Are there problems with this approach? Undoubtedly. However,
I don't think just throwing Gates's money at the problem will solve anything.
If you want to hire top professors you also have to have benefits they
wouldn't get at other schools. Salary may do it, but I have a feeling that
most professors are in it for the research opportunities anyway.

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zck
This idea seems contrary to Gates's goals. He's said that he wants the money
he's giving to charity to be spent in his lifetime. Endowing a school would
necessarily prevent this goal.

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joechung
Just to name a couple: The Foundation endowed $20 million to Duke University
(University Scholars program). He also endowed $10 million to the University
of Washington in his mother's memory (Mary Gates Scholars program).

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byrneseyeview
Sounds like Olin:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_W._Olin_College_of_Eng...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_W._Olin_College_of_Engineering)

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_pi
Except not a trade school. Olin is bit heavy on entrepreneurial ventures
though.

