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.