Boy, This Really Is Not Rocket Science!
Bill Gates is an incredibly wealthy man.
Bill Gates is an incredibly successful technologist.
Bill Gates is an incredibly successful entrepreneur.
Bill Gates is an incredible validation of a Harvard education.
Bill Gates is an incredible example of how the best and brightest can be way out of touch with reality in America.
Recently I heard an interview with Bill Gates and his wife. They plan to donate 90% of their wealth to charity.
During the TV interview, Bill Gates said that in the future he wants 80% of all Americans to be college educated.
Colleges students are selected on the basis of their IQ (or perhaps because of athletic ability or some quota imposed by the government). Colleges and universities pride themselves on being set up to educate “the best and brightest”.
At UCLA, where I was once an assistant professor, I did not see students with IQs below 100. In my years of service in the US Army Mathematics Steering Committee, I visited many university campuses. I did not see students with IQs below 100 there either.
An IQ of 100 is average. Therefore, the “Bill Gates quota” would apply a new level of “dumbing down” to the education system.
Here in Harford County Maryland, one of the most productive schools is our Vo-Tech high school. It does not focus on IQ; it focuses on capability to produce. They do not limit technical to “high-tech”. They don’t dumb down the students’ education. But they don’t accept 80% either.. They admit students who love doing what Vo-Tech teaches. They focus on building productivity.
Bill Gates was privileged, brilliant and doing what he loved from the age of puberty, as do the kids at Vo-Tech.
I wonder what makes Bill Gates think that 80% of the population will love doing what college prepares them for.
Indeed President Obama’s recent focus on junior colleges seems to me to be a much better idea than that proffered by Bill Gates.
I earned four degrees from Cal Tech. Nevertheless, I may have been less productive than either of my two brothers who were not college educated.
The oldest of them had a successful career in the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command. When he left the Air Force he started a very successful business. In -,
After my other brother got out of the Army at the end of World War II, he went to work in the oil fields. He started out, as I did later, as a roustabout. Eventually he became one of the nation’s experts on “secondary recovery”. Secondary recovery is a highly technical method of reclaiming the residual 85% of the oil left behind when traditional production methods no longer work. He was doing what he loved.
My take is that an education system in which 80% of the population find a productive niche which they love would do much for the country. College educating people who do not love what they find there will not do much for the country. Dumbing down the college Curriculum will not do much for the country.