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- Nonetheless, it wasn’t hard to find a few daggers in a speech that Casper gave in May, 2010, in Jerusalem. The United States has “two types of college education that are in conflict with each other,” he said. One is “the classic liberal-arts model—four years of relative tranquility in which students are free to roam through disciplines, great thoughts, and great works with endless options and not much of a rationale.” The second is more utilitarian: “A college degree is expected to lead to a job, or at least to admission to a graduate or professional school.” The best colleges divide the first two years into introductory courses and the last two into the study of a major, all the while trying to expose students to “a broad range of disciplines and modes of thought.” Students, he declared, are not broadly educated, not sufficiently challenged to “search to know.” Instead, universities ask them to serve “the public, to work directly on solutions in a multidisciplinary way.” The danger, he went on, is “that academic researchers will not only embrace particular solutions but will fight for them in the political arena.” A university should keep to “its most fundamental purpose,” which is “the disinterested pursuit of truth.” Casper said that he worried that universities would be diverted from basic research by the lure of new development monies from “the marketplace,” and that they would shift to “ever greater emphasis on direct usefulness,” which might mean “even less funding of and attention to the arts and humanities.”
Man, it took a while to get to that point, but very well articulated.
sounds_sound · 4688 days ago · link ·
Stanford is a really pretty campus. Doesn't hold a candle to UC Santa Cruz though. That's a special place. I was a truck driver in the Bay Area for a bit. Delivered goods from Santa Rosa, to San Jose, and Sacramento to Santa Cruz. The drive to Santa Cruz was the best.
One little secret that people don't tell you about Silicon Valley is that it's basically a shitty highway with a bunch of corporate parks every exit. It's full of parking lots and ugly, faceless architecture and if you want to go somewhere for lunch you have to drive to the group of chain restaurants beside the gas station near the off ramp. Yipee! Guess that's why Google has it's own chef...
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cynthianews · 4688 days ago · link ·
wow had no clue, looks like they need to spruce up their buildings like they do their sites. It could be Vegas Valley, or maybe get some Dubai and Hong Kong inspiration.