Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

No, I went to college determined to learn a lot, spent about 2 years on pre-reqs, then dropped out because I wasn't really learning anything. Starting a company was far more interesting than going to school at the time, and still is. When I went back, I decided to go as fast as I could, because I wanted to get it over with, fully aware that there wasn't much to learn from earlier experience.

There were some instructive classes. I had a professor that was passionate about assembly, and another that I had for several classes, that gave me an FPGA board and told me I could build whatever I wanted, and he would grade me on that, since the coursework would be very easy for me. I built a basic processor, with an assembly language I devised, which was more instructive than anything I ever actually did in a class. The vast majority, however, were not worth much.

What's interesting is that I was interested enough in the subject to learn tons about it on my own over the course of more than a decade. A couple years of institutional bullshit was enough to change that. Today, I'd much prefer to do Udacity or Coursera courses than go to an actual school. At least I can study exactly what I want, and the assignments are well thought out.

Every year I get a number of students whose entire motivation to be in my class is that they want to get the piece of paper. This sort of purely extrinsic motivation does not tend to make them very good students (although occasionally I have one that does well and gets an A, good for them). I'm always a little disappointed in them, because the class is more fun for both of us if they're more internally motivated; sometimes I can manage to get them actually interested, and then they perk up and are happier (and often do better), but sometimes they've just decided that they're not going to like college, and you know what? I can't force them to.

Doesn't that really depend on the material. I flipped through some of the assignments you have on your website, and while you do have some interesting assignments, you also have stuff like Homework 5 in your sys admin class, where the student has to use traceroute to learn about the topology of the school's network. I am certain I could have done that assignment in 6th or 7th grade without difficulty. If I had to do it now, I would absolutely hate it. It is a fine assignment for students that have never troubleshot a networking issue, but if you have any experience whatsoever, its simply tedious and not particularly instructive. Nobody is going to be motivated by tedious easy assignments.

In my class, and in those of my colleagues who have not overinflated their grades, As are gotten by the students who impress us with their outstanding work. Part of that is, of course, making sure they do all the pieces (don't skip anything, make sure it all works, check your work, etc), and the smart-but-sloppy students who skip things tend to be my A- and B+ students rather than my A students. But the students whose primary priority is checking everything off on a checklist, just "doing everything", rather than "getting it" or "making a cool thing" or whatever, almost invariably don't succeed in getting the A.

I believe that you sincerely believe this. I sincerely believe it is not true. Checking boxes is indistinguishable from outstanding work, by your metrics. Somebody that is checking a checkbox by definition won't miss anything, the truly interested student is more likely to deeply explore one area and go lightly on another, becoming the A- or B+ student. If you have knowledge going in, the easiest thing to do is juke the stats and grind out as fast as possible.

Where did I say that?

Asking questions is crucial. If you cannot formulate the right questions, you cannot progress in learning.

This student sounds like a self-starter. I just think it's uncalled for to question what he did. Even if he thinks of it as "just checking boxes". He might not think of it that way in years to come.

He did the work. He kept his GPA up.

Hopefully he was intellectually curious and he formulated questions (even if he never got the chance to ask them). If he has aspirations for grad school, "it's not over yet".

There's still plenty of time to reconsider viewing his education as "checking off boxes" and to become more curious.

Meanwhile he did the work. And that's more than many students do.

The problem is, there are a lot of students that can grind a checklist that are worthless.

Cheating at solitaire? Of course you can go through the motions, but for the money (even public) education costs, that seems like quite a waste of opportunity.