This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

If we want our country and economy to get back on track we need to fix the education system for math and science related degrees. It’s simple really and everyone knows it. Growth happens when people build and sell things. In an age of high tech innovation those “growth” building blocks rely squarely on the skills acquired in a science, technology, math or engineering curriculum. It’s why the president and other industry groups are advocating for more students to graduate with these degrees.

In a recent article in the New York Times, Christopher Drew talks about “Why Science Majors Change Their Minds.” He really highlights some of the systemic issues that are engrained in our institutions but having experienced firsthand what it’s like to study engineering, I can tell you what’s really going on.

Cramsorption Learning. How fun is this? 2 hours a day, 3 days a week, a professor stands up in front of a classroom and paraphrases sections from a chemistry text book. After a few weeks of lectures and labs, the class is ready for its first test. A few days before the exam the libraries are pact. Students cram all of the formulas and anecdotes into their brains because in a few hours they will be responsible for regurgitating those same formulas onto a test. And once that test is finished, all of that information evaporates. Why? Because now the students need to focus on the next chapters and shortly thereafter they’ll have their next exam. By the next semester most of the learned information will go to waste because there was never any real practical experience applied to the information in the first place. Cram, regurgitate, next.

Learning from experience. One of the best Electrical Engineering classes I ever took was in high school during my freshman year. It wasn’t an EE class per se’ but it just as easily could have been. My teacher David Peins, basically said to the class, “here are some parts, here is how to make a Printed Circuit Board (PCB), and here are some circuits. Go build a firefighting robot that can autonomously navigate a maze and put out a fire.” What ensued was what all engineering programs should be like. We had to figure things out on our own and when we had questions, which we did almost all the time, we would ask Mr. Peins. By the end of the class we had learned about resistors, transistors, tute-bot circuits, and an entire foray of engineering concepts. I didn’t even learn about transistors until my junior year in my real ECE major. In high school, I learned these concepts by doing and not by sitting in some lecture hall taking notes.

Grades, grades, grades. I got a 2.5 GPA the first semester of my freshman year. I thought I could do what I did in high school – almost nothing and get by with good grades. My other college buddies thought the same thing. It turned out they did much better than I did freshman year, but it was also true that they were not pursuing a degree in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). So here I was taking extremely hard courses, working 3x as many hours as my peers for crappier grades. And as school progressed it was time for me to start thinking about my future. At one point I thought about attending the London School of Economics. I gave them a call and they said I needed a 3.5 GPA regardless of my major. So here I was thinking about my future and I was already at a disadvantage because my major produced historically lower grades than other majors. Had I really wanted to go to the school I might have switched. I know I debated it almost every day for two years.

School Rankings. The end justifies the means. I heard a story once that went like this. A university had a top program for entrepreneurship. The best students from the STEM majors wanted to put their skills to work so instead of taking jobs from some of the top, high paying companies like Google or Intel, they choose to work on their own projects. Great, right? More entrepreneurs. Bring it. Well that university ended up cutting back on that program because those high quality students weren’t taking those high paying jobs. And when part of a school’s rankings are predicated on graduate’s starting salaries, you might see why long term opportunities were sacrificed for short term gains. We’ve seen this story before though – see Wall Street.

Money, money, money. In college, my buddies and I came up with this great idea that we thought would change the world and make us a lot of money. We realized that millions of cars each day were driving over speed bumps in the roads. These speed bumps were put in place to force the car to slow but consequentially there was also a lot of energy going to waste during this process. We thought that we could harness this lost kinetic energy and pump it back into an electrical grid. So we went to work. We started developing the equations and formulas needed to make this happen. One of our professors was helping us but after a while he asked, “why are you doing this?” Thinking this was already an obvious answer, we responded “because it’s a great idea and it will make us rich.” He quickly began to tell us about a fellow engineering friend of his who came up with several inventions but ultimately went to Wall Street because he wanted to get paid and he was having a hard time turning inventions into real products and businesses.

Its Hard. One of my exam questions once was, “How much fuel do you need to get to mars?” That was it. We needed to account for the earth’s gravity, various altitude levels, the trajectory of the flight path, the mass and weight of the ship, and so on. This was a straight up NASA question and I was barely doing well on my calculus exams. The reality is that most STEM majors have topics that are extremely difficult and sometimes they are just too hard too complete. How did I deal with this? I just worked harder. Was it worth it? It was for me but most others deferred to the “Grades, Grades, Grades” section.

Changing the Status-Quo. The feeling I get with most STEM course work today is that they were designed for a 9 to 5 industrial age with the goal of producing great workers for great companies in a non-global economy. This reverberated through my mind as I sat in those giant lecture halls. But now we are very much in a competitive, global, all-hours-of-the-day economy. We need a system that rewards risk taking and encourages people to pursue challenging academic careers. This is not happening today because we are too focused on school rankings, easy grades, short term gains, and maintaining the status-quo.

Sooner or later these issues will be addressed and they will most likely come from someone who has the building blocks to address and engineer real problems. I just hope more people stick with Science, Technology, Math and Engineering and don’t change their minds.

Why Engineering Majors Change Their Minds is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
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I’ve said several times on this blog that the education system is broken and is in desperate need of change. I now think we are finally starting to see the emergence of a new era in education reform. One led by the private sector.

The issue I still struggle with is how to balance the intersection, or lack thereof, between cutting edge methods of education with societal expectations of having to graduate from an accredited university.

Specifically, what is the difference between a Harvard business professor teaching a Harvard class, in Harvard, vs. someone like a Fred Wilson teaching a business class in his firm’s office? What is the difference between a computer science professor teaching JavaScript in a university building vs. a computer science entrepreneur teaching JavaScript in some office space in NYC?

To me, the answer simply boils down to a piece of paper. A degree. Being able to say you graduated from a prestigious program or accredited university which is still very highly regarded within our society. My friend calls this a “luxury good.”

Furthermore, what does it really mean to have “accreditation in the United States?”  According to the US Department of Education:

The goal of accreditation is to ensure that education provided by institutions of higher education meets acceptable levels of quality.

Well I think its clear that the “levels of quality” are definitely not acceptable. Just go watch the movie Waiting for Superman.

And how exactly does a University even achieve this “accreditation?”

Accrediting agencies, which are private educational associations of regional or national scope, develop evaluation criteria and conduct peer evaluations to assess whether or not those criteria are met. Institutions and/or programs that request an agency’s evaluation and that meet an agency’s criteria are then “accredited” by that agency.

So I’ve always wondered, “what if there was a way to leverage the best technologies and platforms for education while still maintaining an element of prestige or recognition outside of the broken, very expensive university systems?”

And now I think I know the solution: New Accreditation Agencies and Guidelines.

Here is how it would work:

1. There would be new, self governed accreditation agencies, with new guidelines, that are not subject to government oversight.
2. These agencies would be comprised of successful, influential individuals who have rich domain expertise (e.g. venture capital, finance, online ad tech, biology, etc).
3. The agency itself would be its own university or academic institution.
4. These agency individuals would oversee: a) the appointment of other “teachers” b) the fundraising initiatives of the “investment pool” (described later) c) public outreach and communications about the agency itself via personal blogs, op-eds on third party publications, etc.
5. These agency individuals would teach: a) design curriculums, b) teach and broadcast classes using the latest education platforms (e.g. SkillShare, YouTube), c) make introductions as needed on behalf of their students
6. These individuals would invest: using the “investment pool,” these individuals would allocate money to students that have demonstrated the ability to succeed as a jobs creator, otherwise known as entrepreneurs via their class projects (described later).
7. The investment pool would be comprised of capital raised from non-profits, endowments, donations and there would be no contingencies tied to the money.
8. At the end of the curriculum, the students would be given a degree that is widely recognized by the participating members of the agency (e.g. the influential VCs, financiers, executives, etc). Instead of graduating in hopes of getting a job, these students would be graduating with an extensive network of active working people with a possibility of getting money from the “investment pool” to fund a business.
9. Student tuition is not required.
10. Tests are not used to assess students. Projects, prototypes, and inventions are.

The University of Nothing – The Bylaws is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
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I’ve blogged about my views on the broken education system in the past, but I don’t think anyone more clearly articulates the issues than Sir Ken Robinson.

This video is a must watch for parents and students or anyone that has a vested interested in education…which should really be everyone.

Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms (Video) is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
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This post originally appeared on Badger Engineers.

My company Spinback was recently acquired by Buddy Media, the largest Facebook Management Company in the world. It’s clear that my four years studying in the Wisconsin College of Engineering has played a role in that acquisition.

At the core, I’d argue that an engineering, math, or science related degree is the single best degree or use of four years in an undergraduate program, especially a program at UW – Madison. In my years in the COE, I obtained a certain skill set that has helped me succeed during and after school, and in the various businesses I was involved with including Spinback. I’m not talking about skills like designing a circuit or solving for a system of equations. I’m talking about the cliché skills we always hear about but disregard as obvious and too abstract for our own benefit.

The skills I’m talking about are teamwork, problem solving, hard work and creativity. In every single class and project that I worked on while at school, each one of these skills was required.  I remember spending many hours with my friends like Steve Weisman (ECE ’08) and David Nosbusch (ECE ’08) poring over class notes and textbooks (and also starting two businesses together while at school). No matter what the content and material, the routine was the same. We studied together, relentlessly discussed the problems together, and used creativity to help solve a solution when we couldn’t find one. In the COE, this is what we were all taught to do. In the real world, these are the skills that have helped me succeed and they are also the same skills that have given me confidence to venture out as an entrepreneur.

Before we were acquired, we were the typical startup. We had raised very little money and had a billion and one things to do. We had to build a product, sell the product to clients, create marketing materials, manage finances, create processes and business workflows, deal with attorneys, and on and on. The reality is I never learned about any one particular topic in school that was applicable to our business. Its not like I took a class called “how to prioritize features” or “how to get a terms sheet from a VC.” I did however learn how to think in a certain way. An analytical thought process that allowed me to break down each component of our business and understand how each component affected the other.  And this is what engineering is all about. It’s about understanding how things work, in order to identify a problem and ultimately solve for that problem.

At Spinback, the problem we were solving was how to help online retailers leverage social media to drive and track new sales. In a short period of time, our solutions called EasyShare and EasyTrack helped us secure over 15 clients in less than two months. We were able to sign up some of the largest online retailers in the world, convince investors to give us money to scale our business, and secure our position as a thought leader in the social commerce space. As a result, we were lucky and fortunate enough to be acquired by one of the fastest growing technology companies of all time.

Looking back, I can recall one very late night in our Union Square office. As we were trying to solidify a sales and marketing strategy one of my partners said, “this is one giant equation that we are solving.”  In that moment I thought about the four years at UW-Engineering and said, “Yes, yes it is.”

Related articles

• Buddy Media Acquires Social Commerce Platform Spinback (mashable.com)

Value of Engineering to the Entrepreneur is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
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We are experiencing academic inflation. This is a theme I can’t seem to shake and its something that I think is only getting worse. Much worse, so long as our educational institutions keep up the status quo.

If you break it down, the logical train of thought should go something like this:

1. Go to school
2. Do well
3. Graduate
4. Get a job
5. Make lots of money
6. Live your life

Somewhere along the road we ended up at a place that looks something like this:

1. Go to school – if you can even get in
2. Take adderall to do well on tests
3. Do well – assuming the class isn’t beaten up by a ridiculous curve
4. Graduate
5. Not qualified enough to get a high paying job so repeat steps 1 – 4 (or you just want more job security)
6. Graduate
7. No jobs, student loans, and you realized you were passionate about something completely unrelated to the previous 8 years of school
8. Take a crappy job, make money and pay off your loans or pursue your dreams as an unemployed entrepreneur
9. Live your life

I’m obviously exaggerating a bit (or am I) but you get the idea. I think we are at that moment in time when people are beginning to realize that education is more about practical experience and less about theoretical, mental gymnastics that spit out a piece of paper after 4 years.

This excerpt from a recent TechCrunch article called Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education. really spells it out and I really think Peter nails it.

“A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

The post than goes on to say:

Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe.The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.

And this couldn’t be further from the truth. Just ask any recent college graduate and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Fortunately, there are some very smart people doing some very smart things in the educational field but at the end of the day, this will be a battle between cultural expectations and measurable results. After seeing innovations like the Khan Academy, which is in my opinion one the most important advancements in information technology and education, I’m confident we’ll move beyond the status quo and into an era that rewards results, innovation and happiness, and not elitism, cultural norms, and degrees.

Below is a video by Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Academy and perhaps one of the soon-to-be most important figures of our generation.

Related articles

• Peter Thiel Believes the Future Belongs to College Dropouts (theatlanticwire.com)

Academic Inflation is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
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If you are in college you should start your own business because there is no better time to do so.

When I was in college working on thecampusatlas.com I remember thinking how great it was to have the flexibility of a student and to have the resources of a college university in order to get things done. I was surrounded by exceptionally bright people from all different backgrounds and areas of expertise who were willing to provide guidance.

A friend of mine recently had success with his college endeavor and conveys a similar thought in a recent article called Deconstructing Invite Media’s success story :

“There is no better time to start a company than when you’re in school,” he said.

After all, college students don’t require a lot of money, their housing often is paid for, and their peers often are willing to hustle at all hours to meet deadlines. “You can’t beat that when you need to have your attention focused on the company,” he wrote in an e-mailed response to a question.

Furthermore, academic institutions have the resources to educate entrepreneurs on any single area of a business or topic and by leveraging the various academic resources to build your business, you actually obtain a wider knowledge base of information then originally intended.

As a student, you have the ability to build your own business in a safe, low-cost, resource-rich environment and if it doesn’t work out you still hedged your bet because you’ll most likely graduate with a degree.

Related articles

• Deconstructing Invite Media’s success story (philly.com)

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School is mostly bullshit. The only way you learn things is by doing things. Real things. Things that have consequences and things that have rewards. A “C” on some school paper isn’t really a consequence, and an “A” isn’t really a reward.

A consequence is losing money on a sunk venture.

A consequence is damaging a good relationship on a failed project.

A reward is turning an idea into a reality.

A reward is getting recognition for some meaningful contribution to a meaningful endeavor.

When I was in high school I had the privilege of working for a person who threw me into the fire and showed me first hand what consequences and rewards, in the business world, were all about.  That person was Marc Harrison, President of a company called Silicon-East Inc which is a small, very technical and very experienced hands on IT firm.

On day one, Marc had me building computers. Start to finish. From hardware assembly to software installation. Up until that point, my experience with PC’s ranged from basic MS Dos to Sim City guru. And before I knew it, I was building, installing and repairing hundreds of computers and shortly thereafter, I was doing the same with servers, laptops and networks. I was on the phone daily with folks from Intel and Microsoft and attended many, many conferences including Intel Channel Partner Conferences and the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

At a relatively young age I learned what consequences and rewards meant.

I learned that a consequence is incorrectly building someone’s computer or network  and seriously damaging their business.

I learned that a consequence is incorrectly invoicing a customer and losing hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars.

I also learned however, that a reward is making someone’s day easier by educating and selling that person on new technologies.

I learned that a reward is having the respect and endorsement to represent a company at events and conferences nationwide, even if only 15 years old, and flying solo.

Most importantly, I learned that the only way to really learn anything is by doing. Experience matters most.

Thanks Marc.

Learning From Experience is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
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Over a year ago I wrote an open letter to several faculty members of the University of Wisconsin – Madison. In the letter I voiced my concerns over the broken admissions process and broken academic protocols within the school and within other universities. I also discussed the importance of building a network and more importantly, maintaining the health of that network.

Well, this past weekend I attended my younger brother’s graduation at UW-Madison and I couldn’t help but think about how broken the system still is.

This is another open letter to the faculty members of UW-Madison.

(Before reading this letter, please note that I will be making this letter publicly available on my blog. Also, kindly take note of the recipients).
To: Chancellor Carolyn Martin – chancellor@news.wisc.edu
To: Provost Paul M. DeLuca, Jr. – provost@provost.wisc.edu
To: Director of Admissions, Steve Amundson – samundson@uwmad.wisc.edu
To: Dean of Students, Lori Berquam – lberquam@odos.wisc.edu
To: Vice Chancellor for Administration, Darrell Bazzell – dbazzell@vc.wisc.edu
To: Vice Chancellor for University Relations, Vince Sweeney – vsweeney@bascom.wisc.edu
CC: Executive Director, Youth Speaks – james@youthspeaks.org

5/20/2010
Dear Ambassadors and Respected Representatives of UW-Madison and Education,

It’s been over a year since my first letter to some of you regarding my concerns over the current admissions process, concerns over the current state of affairs within various academic departments, and concerns with the overall reverence (or lack there of) for the alumni network. This past weekend, I sat in the Kohl center watching my brother and his peers graduate in the same exact 2:30 pm “Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the School of Business and College of Engineering” ceremony I did two years ago. In attendance from my family was, in addition to myself, my parents, grandparents and sister. Simply being back in Madison and sitting in the Kohl center brought back all of the feelings I had when I was attending school. A sense of pride, distinction, loyalty, success, and belonging. All of these feelings came back full circle, and then I watched James Kass’s charge to the graduates and his words hit me like a ton of bricks.

In his closing remarks, he said:

“So I’m going to ask you to do something starting next week after you revel in this weekend celebrating all that you’ve done and all that you are. And when you wake up next week, always and forever celebrating all that you are and all that you’ve done, I want you to ask yourself if you’re satisfied. And I don’t care where you come down on the political spectrum, even if you passionately disagree with everything I believe in. I just want to know if you’re satisfied, and if you’re not, what it is you’re going to do about it, because the system has been designed perfectly to achieve the results it achieves.”

Almost a week later, I’m still asking this question, “am I satisfied?” And the answer is most certainly and emphatically “NO.”

I’m not satisfied because over a year ago I wrote some of you a letter voicing my concerns for your methods and system. How the university showed either a lack of interest, lack of means, or incompetency when evaluating and rejecting a potential UW candidate, my younger sister (and probably others). A person that would have most certainly strengthened the UW network and its legacies, which was a theme that was addressed in one of the speeches during the commencement ceremony (so much so that the alumni present in the ceremony were asked to stand among the crowd, I among those). Well, a year later I can report that my sister, a could-have been future UW-Alumni, has just finished her first year at Penn State with a 3.8 GPA making dean’s list both semesters. In addition, she was 1 of about 30 freshmen selected among an application pool of about 250 for the nursing program. Although I’m proud of my sister, I’m disappointed with UW because she could have been an asset and member of the badger network in years to come. Perhaps if the system hadn’t been “designed perfectly to achieve the results it achieves” she would have been accepted to UW and could have been sitting next to me in the Kohl center as a badger, your peer and ambassador, and not as an outsider. So I ask, what have you changed since last year? What steps have you taken to improve?

I’m not satisfied because over a year ago I voiced my concerns about a University that is trying “to compete in a rapidly changing world using obsolete methods and practices.” As this world becomes more complex, it will be less relevant for a student to earn a 4 year degree and some are already beginning to question its purpose. In addition, as technology becomes more advanced, it will become even easier to obtain the same level of education for a fraction of the cost. And with a fragile economy, unpredictable global markets, and diminishing job openings, what does the University do? It raises tuition for students and claims that it will benefit everyone. I ask how? How could this possibly benefit everyone or anyone? By increasing tuition for students and families, who are already struggling under current circumstances, we are supporting a system that was designed for a 9-5 industrial revolution. How can the University (or all universities for that matter) possibly expect to maintain its clout among other academic institutions when the best students either can’t afford tuition or aren’t accepted in the first place? Furthermore, why do you use broken metrics to evaluate these candidates? Metrics that look at grades from standardized tests (tests that might not be conducive to some of the brightest and most creative minds), metrics that look at grades from high school systems that were also designed for the 19th century, or worst off, metrics that do matter but are greatly overlooked – like leadership, entrepreneurship. Every aspect of our world is changing, some quicker than others, and if the academic institutions can’t adapt at least at a “satisfactory” speed, then “satisfaction” will be the least of our concerns because at that moment, we will be concerned most with survival as a society and as individuals.

At the end of the day, I respectfully ask that you take the same advice that was delivered to your students at their commencement ceremony. Like James, I’m here “to tell you that I’m not satisfied, but that I am one of many trying to do my work, knowing that it’s in your hands now and hoping that you’re willing to do yours.”

Please don’t be complacent. Please don’t raise tuition because it’s the only way. Please don’t reject exceptional students because they don’t fit your admissions template. Please don’t support a broken system.

But most of all, please challenge the status quo among other academic institutions because tomorrow is very different from today, and if you do this, you will secure a bright future for our university, its legacy, and indirectly, our society.

My Very Best Regards,

Dan Reich

Class of 2008′

Dear Ambassadors and Respected Representatives of UW-Madison and Education – A Year in Review is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
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It will be very different in 10 years.  It is very different now.

Pretty soon those backpacks carrying 100 lbs worth of textbooks will be replaced by one, 10.2 oz Amazon Kindle or even your iPod.

From Gizmodo:

iTunes U will be teaming up with universities and other education establishments to offer a free hosting service for educators.

As information continues to become more widespread and readily accessible, the question becomes, what value does a physical university really have?

If I can get the same education for free either on the Internet or through other distributed devices, why do I really need to be in a classroom, or furthermore, why do I even need to be in a University?

Students can take courses online and learn what they need to learn with companies like Phoenix, Kaplan, BigThink, Academic Earth and even YouTube (Dear Ambassadors and Respected Representatives of UW-Madison and Eduction).

The “Degree” is beginning to seem less and less valuable (in many cases, but not all) when you can learn what you want, when you want, where you want , and apply those lessons to real world applications. This to me, is infinitely more valuable than doing homework or taking tests in an insulated environment.

However, being in a physical university does have its advantages. You are surrounded with like-minded individuals and have a very good chance at meeting the right people, and creating some real value for the real world. Then again, can’t we just do that online?

“School Spirit Skit 2” – Kanye West (The College Dropout)

You keep it going man, you keep those books rolling,
You pick up those books your going to read
And not remember and you roll man.
You get that a sociate degree, okay,
Then you get your bachelors, then you get your masters
Then you get your master’s masters,
Then you get your doctron,
You go man, then when everybody says quit
You show them those degree man, when
Everybody says hey, your not working,
Your not making in money,
You say look at my degrees and you look at my life,
Yeah i’m 52, so what, hate all you want,
But i’m smart, i’m so smart, and i’m in school,
And these guys are out here making
Money all these ways, and i’m spended mine to be smart.
You know why?
Because when i die, buddy, you know
What going to keep me warm, that right, those degrees

I’m not suggesting students drop out of school.  Just, reconsider HOW and WHERE you get your education and reconsider HOW and WHEN you apply what you’ve learned to the real world.

A fantastic piece was written yesterday in the NYTimes.com by Mark C. Taylor titled, End The University As We Know It. If you are going to read one thing today, please read this piece.

An excerpt from the piece:

GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities. Kant, in his 1798 work “The Conflict of the Faculties,” wrote that universities should “handle the entire content of learning by mass production, so to speak, by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee.”

Unfortunately this mass-production university model has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization. In my own religion department, for example, we have 10 faculty members, working in eight subfields, with little overlap. And as departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less. Each academic becomes the trustee not of a branch of the sciences, but of limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems. A colleague recently boasted to me that his best student was doing his dissertation on how the medieval theologian Duns Scotus used citations.

worth the entire read..more here…

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There are three key components admissions officers look at when reviewing students’ college applications:

• Standardized Test Scores
• Grades
• Subjective Qualities

Today, most large universities are faced with the challenge of reviewing thousands of applications in a way that equally addresses all three pillars of admissions.

But, can they really pay equal attention to all three? Should they?

Consider how subjective or objective each category is.

• Standardized Test Scores – Very black and white. Every student takes the same test. 100% objective
• Grades – Not so black and white. Students go to different schools, have different teachers, different text books. 50% objective, 50% subjective.
• Subjective Qualities – Extra curricular, essays, volunteering, leadership, etc. 100% subjective.

In a world that is losing economic and industrial boundaries (the world really is flat), people with “smarts”, high IQs, and academic mind sets are becoming commoditized. Look no further than India to see how bright minds, engineers and mathematicians,  are literally being cranked out in the hundreds if not thousands or millions.

The most valuable quality of tomorrow’s work force will be those with leadership skills. Motivation. Determination. Communicative abilities. Marketing abilities. A way to stand out to be bold, different. Unique.

Having the “smarts” is absolutely critical, but without an effective way to leverage your “smarts”, you become less valuable to yourself and employers.

Universities need to reevaluate how to consider all 3 pillars on an equal basis, with new methodologies and in a way that scales with the thousands of applications. They need to appreciate the value of the “Subjective Qualities” more so than they do now. This is not an easy task, but I’m confident some folks are up to the challenge.

After speaking with Steve Amundson, the new Director of Admissions at UW, I believe there are those individuals who are certainly capable and willing to meet these challenges. Steve is one of those people and I wish him the best of luck.

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3 Pillars for College Admissions is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
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