"If the Ivy League was the breeding ground for the elites of the American Century, Stanford is the farm system for Silcon Valley." -Ken Auletta
This quote appeared in a New Yorker story from last April. While "Get Rich U" doesn't exactly wax eulogic on Stanford's educational priorities, it is a fascinating exploration of what makes the university the innovative powerhouse that it is. Stanford has quite a track record, after all, claiming credit for some five thousand companies including Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Netflix, Electronic Arts, LinkedIn, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Google. What makes the article particularly noteworthy, though, is how thoroughly the author walks through the themes discussed on this blog. It reads as a recipe for creativity.
1. Community Builds Creativity. The campus itself was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead as an open environment with no walls, broad avenues, and vast gardens lined by palms and California live oaks. Central plazas allow large gatherings and encourage chance encounters.
2. Diverse People = Diverse Ideas. The school cultivates economic and social diversity: caucasian students are a minority, 17% of Stanford’s undergraduates are the first member of their family to attend college, and if an undergraduate's annual family income is below a hundred thousand dollars, tuition is free.
3. T-shaped People. There is an overwhelming emphasis on interdiscplinary education. From the article: "[interdisciplinarity] is the philosophy now promoted at the various schools at Stanford — engineering, business, medicine, science, design — which encourages students from diverse majors to come together to solve real or abstract problems. The goal is to have them become what are called “T-shaped” students, who have depth in a particular field of study but also breadth across multiple disciplines. Stanford hopes that the students can also develop the social skills to collaborate with people outside their areas of expertise."
4. Dream Big Dreams. Stanford has a "bias towards action", and students profess a "sometimes inflated belief that their work is changing the world for the better." The culture emphasizes learning-by-doing.
I'd highly recommend that anyone interested in creativity or education give the article a read. And there's an interesting hook for the Stanford community as well: the article discusses the possibility that Stanford's current emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation threatens the fundamental mission of the university itself. From former university president Gerhard Casper, "Stanford is now justifying its existence mostly in terms of what it can do for humanity and improve the world." All well and good, but what about learning for the sake of knowledge?
Check out the full article at the Newyorker.com.
