"Columbia, MIT Not Elite Enough?" The Daily Beast Cheat Sheet pointing to Want A Great Job? Don't Go To Second-Tier Schools Like Columbia And MIT from Business Insider
So much for education. If you want to become "cogs in wheel" go to Harvard, Yale, etc, and you might become President. If you want an education, go to Columbia, etc. I'm reminded of Malvina Reynolds' song "Little Boxes" which were "all made out of ticky tacky" . From those wonderful top elite schools who gave you Toxic Debt here's some more.
Avoid the "Layman's Copout" David Miller lectured his Operations Research students at Columbia's Business School by using the example of Stanley Milgram's experiment in learning at Yale in the early 1960s where "electrical shocks" were administered to "improve" learning. It was actually an experiment to study people's willlingness to engage in sadistic destructive behaviour in the interest of science. See a complete description of his "Behavioural Study in Obedience" in Erich Fromm's "Anatomy of Human Destructiveness."
David Miller received an ovation from the students at the end of this first lecture because he was so inspiring by urging students not to "copout" and not to defer to those who are the "experts" or to any concept such as science. Think and most importantly feel for yourself he was saying urging students not to be afraid to tackle and solve complicated problems themsevles based on what they could do as individuals.
The top employers might claim they want this kind of person, but they don't when it comes to reality. They want conformity and obedience which the likes of Harvard, Yale etc, are providing for them. You climbed a mountain, huh? But, what did you actually learn in the classroom about solving problems, thinking and getting it right for the right reason?
Read Frank Partnoy's "F.I.A.S.C.O." about what happened at Morgan Stanley during the 1990s. Or, read "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis about how it all got underway in the 1980s at Salomon Brothers.
MIT has made its course contents available online for the world to obtain an education if you can afford the price of the books. One math book I saw and liked cost a fortune. I don't think that so-called top firms will be recruiting from this group. They've missed the essence of education that it's for its own sake. Today you can sit on top of a mountain with a computer and get the best education available online.
PS another book I really like is Pierre Burton's "Klondike" about the 1898 gold rush to the Yukon. No one found the gold because all the areas had been claimed, but they did learn from the experience of getting there.
And, I must agree that the concentraton of power and wealth will lead to a debacle as it has already done with Toxic Debt. The tendency to become ingrown with a lack of diversification in the population at the top means risk. It's not so much of a revolution that will occur as a collapse much like the USSR that started in 1989 "not with a bang but with a whimper".
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