by Chris Kenrick
Palo Alto Online Staff Are the world's brightest minds working on its most important problems?
Bill Gates thinks not, and has embarked on the Bill Gates 2010 College Tour in a challenge to students and professors to fix the problem.
Stanford University was one of the first stops this week on a tour that is taking Gates to the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The software billionaire, who now co-chairs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said he was struck in recent conversations with friends by the energy, intelligence and passion with which they could dissect subjects like sports and financial markets.
"I was wondering as I heard all that energy and IQ -- could we have had the same discussion about how to have better teachers, or how to make better seeds to improve agriculture so the poorest could have plenty to eat?
"I sort of doubted that was the case."
Gates said he would prefer to see some talent shift away from sports, entertainment, investing and "innovations like drugs for baldness" and in the direction of global health, development and education.
Breakthroughs in solving the world's most vexing problems will require people deeply trained in science, and also those willing to take risks and work in "difficult environments" such as urban schools and destitute countries.
In a lengthy Q & A with students in a packed Memorial Auditorium, he extolled both the discipline of the private sector and |
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