<p>I think the article itself is designed to sell newspapers, it feeds into the hype in every generation about how everything is going to hell in a handbasket, the youth are illiterate morons compared to the older generations, and so forth. I am sure (in fact I know) that when Eliot at Harvard switched the curriculum from ‘the classics’ like learning ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew in the 1870’s that traditionalists yelled he was ruining college (which was, after all, a finishing school for ‘gentlemen’). After the second world war, thanks to the GI bill, which swelled the ranks of college graduates, people were yelling college was ruined, that it was turned into glorified high school, etcd…</p>
<p>Then, of course, we have the conservative voices yelling that thanks to the 60’s, colleges became this recruiting house for the devil or the democratic party, how liberals “took over” and so forth, and ‘ruined it’ . Yeah, I am aware of grade inflation and all the rest, but want to know something else? I suspect this is nothing new, but status quo is boring. Older generations told my generation (now well into middle age) we had it easy compared to them, how they really hit the books, etc, yet I would be willing to bet that if you studied the numbers, you would see the same thing. Grade inflation? The ivies had what were called ‘gentleman C’s’, and as far as I can tell they still do, for the legacies who couldn’t be bothered to learn. When went to school, at a top school, we had kids who were 4.0 grinds, we also had kids who didn’t do so well, and want to know something? In the long run, it often didnt’ correlate the way you would expect, many of the 4.0’s went on to obscurity, many of the less stellar kids did well…</p>
<p>I think there are valid questions to be raised about college, about what its purpose really is. Is it simply a hashmark, as it is in places like China and Japan, where the important thing is to get into the top level school, then after that it doesn’t matter, the name takes you where you want to go? Is it a place to conform to a system, spit back what profesors want, get a high gpa, and hopefully come out prepared to do something? Is it a place to try and open up minds to what is out there, what is possible or new, or is it to factory produce workers who can juggle a spreadsheet? Does it produce people who can deal with change, understand what is going on, are curious about what is going on, or is it simply a way to get your ticket punched for doing ‘the right things’?</p>
<p>Using Zuckerberg seems to imply that college is about following the rules, about doing things the same way others do, that the learning is all about getting good grades, get the ticket punched and work for Goldman sachs or whatever, and while that may be part of the picture, is that what college about? Or is it about a total experience that takes a kid, usually at 18, who doesn’t know a lot and leave them, at 22, realizing what they don’t know and eager to learn it, with the tools to do that? Anyone who thinks college fills you full of all the knowledge you need is kind of mythologizing it, when I came out with a CS degree and started working, I realized how little I knew of what/how systems and such are used, I knew enough to stand in front of a keyboard and act like I knew:). </p>
<p>I think the whole argument is bogus because it is focusing on college as some sort of machine, where the rules are rigid, rather then being an environment that drives ideas. Bill Gates went to Harvard, came in contact with Paul Allen as a like mind, they had access to good computer facilities, and Gates dropped out to found microsoft when he felt the pull. Zuckerberg by being at Harvard, was in an environment that allowed him to be around others with ideas (he didn’t think of facebook by himself, the real ‘facebook’ existed much as visicalc came from real paper spreadsheets) and found something different. The kids at MIT in the 60’s, who helped revolutionize computing (no, folks, IBM rarely revolutionized anything), and many of them never went to class, they spent 20 hours a day in the computer center, at least one of which ended up as an MIT professor without a degree. The fact that they were put around the best and brightest, and had the opportunity to use facilities and such, created a revolution, even though they didn’t care about their GPA or whatever…want to call them losers, or MIT was brain dead for allowing this? (I highly recommend Steven Levy’s book “Hackers”, fascinating look at a world almost 50 years ago). </p>
<p>I don’t think universities have undermined the worth, I think that we are looking at colleges as some sort of diploma mill to get that great job, rather then what it should be, a place to open up kids to a world they haven’t seen, it isn’t supposed to be a training institute (for programming, you could go to ITT tech or whatever they call it), it is supposed to be about learning to learn and also to spur kids forward.</p>