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Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

businessinsider.com

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Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#91

Post by dsjimi »

xenospn wrote: post #63
jason0597 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not surprised. If you grow up as a computer nerd all your life with few recognizable achievements, and suddenly a Big Tech company dangles in front of you $100k or more, very few people can say no, especially if you also grew up from a relatively poor background.

I think it's actually something unique about Americans. When I started my company, I wanted our slogan to be "Helping each other, together". I very quickly realized that no one in the US actually responds to a saying like that. The vast majority simply doesn't "get" it.

The Culture of Narcissism by Lasch or Democracy in America by de Tocqueville might be of interest to you.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#92

Post by Barrin92 »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #45

"Palo Alto-based Stanford University ... and MIT have historically been the primary talent pools for the tech industry" This is far from true. If you look at the total workforce in tech, the majority is by far from much larger, public schools, like Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, etc., etc. MIT and Stanford have had amazing great people, but they are far from the "primary" source of talent…

Not to mention the extremely large foreign born workforce who usually also obtain significant education at home.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#93

Post by thephyber »

vsskanth wrote: post #3

I've always wondered why mega billionaires from this era such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg etc. haven't built universities like Stanford, Duke, Cornell etc. - all started by monopolists from the previous era. I guess Eric Schmidt would be the first one

We got a Trump University. Does that count? /s

Not to point out the obvious, but 2 of your examples never bothered to stay in undergrad university long enough to get a degree and they managed to succeed beyond all of their contemporaries.

Perhaps it says something about our current university system/paradigm that the current wealthy have chosen not to support this route. Or maybe it says more about the Gilded Age robber barons that they chose this route (in addition to the large inheritance fortunes they left).

Marc Andreessen's "Build Stuff" article[1] pointed at the lack of university capacity in the USA (I doubt this is accurate[2]), but leveling up the average university to be closer to the top tier universities would certainly help or at least justify the current cost of university.

[1] https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/

[2] https://www.quora.com/How-many-college-students-are-there-in...

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#94

Post by natalyarostova »

curiousllama wrote: post #31

This will fail not because it's a bad idea, but because the government will reject it. Contrary to popular belief, established universities do a very effective job of preparing tech talent for government jobs. The issues, which Schmidt seems to miss, are twofold: (1) the government, with few exceptions, is a TERRIBLE place to build effective tech skills. Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low p…

Classic modern HN comment. The hard working person with a history of success who is trying a risky ambitious project will fail, because they didn't consider the few things a commentor instantly spotted as problems.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#95

Post by ghaff »

tehabe wrote: post #57

I remember a story that Leland Stanford asked what is needed to found a university and the answer was 200 million dollars. What they didn't tell him, that it also takes 200 hundred years. Universities are a longterm project, if a university is good or not, is something you don't really realise while you are there but when you are finished and try to use your knowledge.

I'll give you an example. MIT was founded in 1861. OK. Sorta bad timing. (Two days after it was chartered, the Civil War broke out.)

But even after it got going and moved to its Cambridge campus in 1916 (significantly funded by George Eastman--as in Eastman Kodak), it didn't really become known as a premier institution until WWII.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#96

Post by [deleted] »

brlewis wrote: post #50
ghaff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could argue that we could use better schools or schools that have more of a focus on subjects needed by a modern workforce. But there's no real shortage of colleges and universities. Yes, existing universities come with lots of legacy entanglements (which can be good as well as bad) but for the most part you're probably better off investing in those schools than tearing down and starting from scratch on a prairie…

When a school rejects qualified applicants because there are too many, doesn't that indicate a shortage of that kind of school?

[deleted]

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#97

Post by vmception »

curiousllama wrote: post #75
Upvoter33 wrote: post #45

"Palo Alto-based Stanford University ... and MIT have historically been the primary talent pools for the tech industry" This is far from true. If you look at the total workforce in tech, the majority is by far from much larger, public schools, like Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, etc., etc. MIT and Stanford have had amazing great people, but they are far from the "primary" source of talent…

Agreed - University of Maryland is a huge tech feeder to public sector orgs, believe it or not.

All the DC area computer science programs feed right into the NSA and defense.

Which is funny because Silicon Valley companies won't think candidates from those schools are that interesting, while simultaneously thinking that the intelligence and defense has better programmers. People are people.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#98

Post by pvg »

tehabe wrote: post #57

I remember a story that Leland Stanford asked what is needed to found a university and the answer was 200 million dollars. What they didn't tell him, that it also takes 200 hundred years. Universities are a longterm project, if a university is good or not, is something you don't really realise while you are there but when you are finished and try to use your knowledge.

Stanford isn't 200 years old, neither is Berkeley. Many UC campuses are a lot younger, UCSC was founded in 1965.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#99

Post by nitrogen »

95_JL_OK wrote: post #78
curiousllama wrote: post #31

This will fail not because it's a bad idea, but because the government will reject it. Contrary to popular belief, established universities do a very effective job of preparing tech talent for government jobs. The issues, which Schmidt seems to miss, are twofold: (1) the government, with few exceptions, is a TERRIBLE place to build effective tech skills. Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low p…

I'd tack onto the first point: obsolete technology everywhere. Worked in the public sector for a short while and the amount of outdated tech being used is astounding. Some of the solutions being discussed as "new" have been outdated for decades. Having to deal with overwhelming bureaucracy in exchange for working on what everywhere else would be legacy systems really killed any desire to stay.

The most important aspect of any technology is that it works. In that regard, functioning "legacy" systems are ideal systems. The legacy bureaucracies are the problem.

Kind of like SpaceX popularizing rocket reuse, we should think of older code, languages, and frameworks as "battle tested", not "legacy". They should only be replaced if it's clear that essential maintenance is not possible, if a critical requirement isn't being met by the old system and will confidently be met by a new one, or if it can be demonstrated that a new system will save more money than improving the old one.

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