Academia Is Eating Its Young

4. The Internet can teach a person much more than most colleges, with the exception of a professional degree--medicine, or engineering. Even then, the degree will just open the door. I've met engineers that couldn't build a house.

5. If you have the money, go for a degree. The women are plentiful--that's about all I remember. Oh, yea--learn what the placebo effect is, and don't let others take advantage of you. Be careful with the student loans-- they are not bankruptable--at least for now. Hopefully, that might change.

6. The most successful tech guys I have know dropped out of school, and learned to program on their own.

7. I've met too any people who feel guilty not completing the degree. I truely, feel they are better off--really. I have seen too many Ivy League guys "skate" on projects, while the high school drop out works 2x as hard, and in the end; most managers do take notice of the "Contributers" and eventually realize the guy with Stanford sweatshirt doesn't do much, besides look cool in the company pictures.

The Royal Institution is more along the lines of what you describe. Or here in the US, the Wood's Hole oceanographic institute. It was pretty much propped up by the Rockefellers.

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/catalog/default.aspx?p=1&...

68% of the authors hold academic positions.

"Because of science - not religion or politics - even people like you and me can have possessions that only a hundred years ago kings would have gone to war to own. Scientific method should not be take lightly.

The walls of the ivory tower of science collapsed when bureaucrats realized that there were jobs to be had and money to be made in the administration and promotion of science. Governments began making big investments just prior to World War II...

Science was going to determine the balance of power in the postwar world. Governments went into the science business big time.

Scientists became administrators of programs that had a mission. Probably the most important scientific development of the twentieth century is that economics replaced curiosity as the driving force behind research...

James Buchanan noted thirty years ago - and he is still correct - that as a rule, there is no vested interest in seeing a fair evaluation of a public scientific issue.

Very little experimental verification has been done to support important societal issues in the closing years of this century...People believe these things...because they have faith."

Academic institutions are unique for enabling people to work on research problems in an environment that is extremely rich and productive, its not for everyone, its certainly not going to make most people rich in cash, and its structures can infuriate as well as enlighten. Thankfully there are other options in life, and other opportunities, but before you rush to reduce the universities to ruins and homogenise research activities, lets just stop for a second and ask what it is the universities uniquely bring to the table.

Maybe, just maybe, there is something worth saving in the idea of a university. Something that may not fit certain people, that may pass over some brilliant people, that may even struggle to satisfy the instant always-on consumerist education that is so fashionable today. Indeed, the university on a social level is a public good. And that public good, transcends the inefficiencies, the politics, and the other complaints pointed toward the universities. When universities are working at their best, they are for the public good, contribute to the public good, and help make society a better place for everyone.