From: Mårten Dolk 

Date: 19 Aug 2005

 

First I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for an excellent site! Your site has inspired me so much that I will write my master thesis on a topic related to relational technology.

 

I found an interesting quote from Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, in a interview in the Swedish magazine Ny Teknik (translates to New Technology). The interview's topic was how Oracle is trying to become the largest software company in the world by buying smaller companies. In a sidebar under the headline "Larry Ellison about ... education and entrepreneurs" we find the following quote (translated to the best of my skills, there are of course dangers with translating a English quote from Swedish back to English):

 

It is hardly surprising that so many entrepreneurs leave higher education to start businesses. The secret of entrepreneurship is to identify what is wrong in conventional knowledge and way of thinking. The secret of failing in college is just to hint that conventional knowledge may be wrong. [That sentence hardly made sense in Swedish so it is hard for me to translate.] I am convinced that Galileo would have failed astronomy! The core of innovation is precisely that, to question conventional truths.

 

I don't think there will be any shortage of jobs when I graduate. Or maybe I should drop out of college now to start a business that Oracle can buy!

 

 

From Fabian Pascal

 

One can hardly expect anything else from a dropout, can one? After all, so many dropouts get rich in the US (witness who's heading Microsoft), and since getting rich is the only objective that counts, is there any wonder that education would gradually come to look like business, and to cater to its objectives?

 

The irony in Ellison's comments is that what he calls "higher education" is actually professional training and business masquerading as higher education. So if things cannot be questioned there, it's precisely because dropouts like Ellison and Gates are now defining education in their own image. What, pray, can be questioned in corporations that is being rewarded rather than punished? When was the last time a large IT vendor came up with real innovation? XML is more up their alley.

 

The beautiful thing (for those who own and run the country) is that by withholding true education from the public, the system produces users unable to reason, and to think critically and independently, users to whom they can sell profitably the flawed technologies and products that their developers, produced of the same system, develop. Elegant, ain't it?

 

As to the preponderance of jobs when you graduate, my advice is to learn chinese or indian as fast as you can.

 

 

Posted 10/28/05