Bill Gates College Tour: Billionaire Encourages Students To Teach

On Monday, recently retired Microsoft Chair Bill Gates embarked on a three-state college tour. Gates kicked off his trip at the University of California-Berkeley, where he spoke on the necessity of youth involvement in crucial issues facing the world.

CNET has more:

The philanthropist and Microsoft chairman said he would like to see some of this [young] brain power shifted to issues like education.

College students, with their youth and open minds, represent an important opportunity to get more people working on these issues, Gates said. Too many, he said, are going into entertainment and other areas. Even those going to science, he noted, are often working on problems such as developing a cure for baldness.

At MIT, Gates revered students going into public service, especially teaching.

The Boston Herald reports:

Gates hailed the 96 recent MIT graduates who joined Teach for America, a national nonprofit that recruits outstanding college graduates to teach for two years in urban and rural public schools. "Every one of those kids who chose the program would have had other opportunities that would have been far more lucrative," Gates said.

He praised KIPP, one of the largest charter school networks which has a longer school day and longer school year. But he criticized teacher unions without naming them, saying they stand in the way of school reform.

Other schools on Gates's tour roster include Stanford, Harvard and University of Chicago.

Comments

[Jazz88105]

06:29 PM on 04/23/2010

Please Bill give me a break thousands of very qualified teachers including my daughter will be laid off come June. The 96 students ( you talk so highly of ) working for Teach America are taking jobs away from people like my daughter who only want to teach not just have a two year fling.

[mcmutter]

02:05 PM on 04/22/2010

Please Bill ... STOP importing programmers from India .... We have more than enough unemployed programmers here who need the jobs ....

[Deep77]

02:58 PM on 04/22/2010

Actually Indian programmers are creating jobs, over a third of Silicon Valley start ups had at least one founder born outside of the US.

We don't have unemployed programmers. Intel laying off workers is not like GM laying off workers. Most laid off IT workers end up starting up their own ventures.

[FoonTheElder]

02:03 PM on 04/22/2010

Bill is doing his part for the education system by spending his money to help kill off public education so he can privatize it. Just like any other privatization project, the teachers get lower pay to pay off the people at the top.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7906570

[hypnotoad72]

05:11 PM on 04/23/2010

Cynical, and quite plausible. As CEO of Microsoft, he allowed a lot of predatory tactics. It's possible he's changed, but I've yet to fully believe that.

Also a shame half the articles presented from that DU link (the left-wing version of "Free Republic") were pulled (error "404")

[Leto II]

12:51 PM on 04/22/2010

Why would they go into teaching? They'll just get fired when parents start complaining that their children aren't doing well enough.

[REDSTATEREFUGEE]

12:36 PM on 04/22/2010

BG could support his caring for public education in the U.S. by injecting several millions into California Central Valley schools, which are currently laying off teachers. Some class sizes are swelling to forty students per teacher. Just imagine how well prepared the current grades 9-12 students will be when they reach their freshman college years. We have witnessed decades of slowly declining writing, reading, and mathematics skills. Reducing class sizes would go a long way to improving results, allowing teachers more individual attention. That correlation probably escaped Bill....

[Reticent]

11:26 AM on 04/22/2010

What's wrong with this picture: Billionaire tells working class and middle class young adults to take jobs with no respect, long working hours, physical risk, an average 3 year after start burn out rate, in a climate of blame and lay offs? Yeah. That's convincing.

[hypnotoad72]

05:12 PM on 04/23/2010

Seconded!

[brightershade]

11:19 AM on 04/22/2010

Gates has the $$ to make a difference in higher education that would be orders of magnitude greater than anyone else if he did one thing: fund the endowment start up of more colleges like Berea College (www.berea.edu) that use their endowments to fund tuition-free scholarships for needy students.

While Harvard is older and much richer than Berea, Berea has been following this model for more than 100 years. It's not a "flash in the pan" or a fad, but a proven way to enable financially needy students to get an education and avoid the fate of many modern college graduates: decades of economic servitude.

[SouthernBlueBelle]

08:16 AM on 04/22/2010

Not such good advise. Every time the trolls want a tax cut teachers salaries & jobs get cut. Georgia is facing huge teacher cuts and increased class room sizes. pitiful

[Tpy]

09:58 AM on 04/22/2010

No, it is good advice. If more people take an interest in teaching, and learn its value, then this sort of thing won't happen as often.

[BonnieNesbitt]

07:57 AM on 04/22/2010

Bill Gates is contributing to the destruction of public schooling. He continues to support KIPP which skews data to make them appear more successful than they are. KIPP kicks out kids who might bring their data down (or not test them) and KIPP and other programs bring in young teachers who stay for a couple of years and move on. Corporate America doesn't respect people who have truly devoted their lives to not only mastering their subjects, but spending the time to understand education.

With what we know today with brain research, learning styles, emotional intelligence, etc., it is a rare, rare person who can come out of college and be a "great" teacher. Many young teachers have harmed my kids and others because they lack the wisdom of age and experience. Yet, we seem to allow the rhetoric be that all "tenured" public school teachers are lazy and bad! This allows for the promulgation of for profit private and charter schools that Gates money supports.

If he really believes in education, he should spend his billions to help out public schools around the country who are laying off teachers, ending programs, etc. because of budget cuts. Hey Bill, talk to your Dad (separate HP article) and give more of your income (and your fellow billionaires) to taxes!

[hypnotoad72]

05:12 PM on 04/23/2010

He also lied to congress:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/2/7/184312/5388

[martiniandabotoxchaser]

07:53 AM on 04/22/2010

I don't see Bill selling his big house and living like an inner city teacher.

[hypnotoad72]

05:13 PM on 04/23/2010

A huge mansion, loaded with more electronic stuff than most of us here on HP combined. It's about as "green" as grass after 2 months of hot summer heat with no rain...

[OlskoolDem]

07:46 AM on 04/22/2010

Hey Bill, you wana make good on that little ole 140 million you promised the Milwaukee School Dist. for computer upgrades? we have the new systems running but we're stiull waiting for the check.
Lots of teachers here are getting the ax, ya freekinn dead beat.

[DavidWyld]

07:23 AM on 04/22/2010

Of course, Bill won the "lotto of life" jackpot a long time ago, so it's easy to criticize him. However, think he has great advice for today's grads. As a college prof, I can certainly appreciate his take on guiding more students toward meaningful careers. Of course, meaning is what you make of it, and even in entertainment, and yes, if someone does ever find a cure for baldness, there's meaning in that for many, many people.

Encourage you to follow the link to the CNET story and read more about the interview and watch and excerpt.

David http://wyld-business.blogspot.com/

[hypnotoad72]

05:15 PM on 04/23/2010

I also agree with your assessment.

(the truth is in the middle)

[stevebol]

03:07 AM on 04/22/2010

Bill, you won. Software defeated hardware just like you thought it would.
You're a genius.

[hypnotoad72]

05:14 PM on 04/23/2010

Good quality software trumps bad quality all the time. Like hardware companies, Microsoft software quality has gone down as well. Shame this isn't a tech forum, otherwise I'd vent that tangent here.

[stevebol]

02:56 AM on 04/22/2010

Didn't Bill Gates drop out of college and go on to pioneer disposable consumer electronics? There's no way I could stay awake listening to him.

[aljstl]

02:03 AM on 04/22/2010

That's a great idea Bill. There's only one problem. Every school district within 300 miles is laying teachers off. My daughter is about to get her teaching degree for Middle School English.
Her school had a job fair and most of the districts that bothered to show up said they weren't hiring, it was just a "courtesy visit". She will graduate cum laude and has been invited to be a commencement speaker for the Education Department. Too bad her job opportunities are non-existent.

[hypnotoad72]

05:15 PM on 04/23/2010

Maybe Microsoft will hire her?

Oh, Bill left so he has no reputation to tarnish (any further than it had by the time he left.)