{"id":537988,"date":"2010-04-21T19:40:25","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T23:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=43895"},"modified":"2010-04-21T19:40:25","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T23:40:25","slug":"gates-on-giving-getting-sharing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/537988","title":{"rendered":"Gates on giving, getting, sharing"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Henry \u201cBill\u201d Gates III <\/a>dropped out of Harvard College<\/a> in 1975 in the fall of his junior year. Barely 20, he went on to build the computer giant Microsoft<\/a>, an entrepreneurial feat that earned him billions and helped to usher in the Internet age.<\/p>\n

Gates came back to Harvard today (April 21), this time for less than an hour at Sanders Theatre, where hundreds of students were packed in like lines of software code. It was the last stop on a three-day, five-campus tour<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I dropped out,\u201d Gates said to a few whoops and cheers, \u201cI told my dad I\u2019d be back.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was his first visit to Harvard<\/a> as a full-time philanthropist, and Gates came armed with a burning question: \u201cAre the brightest minds working on the most important problems?\u201d<\/p>\n

Defining who the best people are is not easy, though many of them are at Harvard and other great universities, Gates said. And defining the biggest problems is not easy either, he said, though they certainly include abject poverty, unequal opportunity, overpopulation, farm efficiency, and finding sources of low-cost, nonpolluting energy.<\/p>\n

Anyone can name \u201ceight or 10 problems,\u201d said Gates, but are \u201cthe top innovators\u201d addressing them?<\/p>\n

A few breakthroughs and some modest efforts on the part of the world\u2019s gifted can add up to great gains, he said. But maybe our minds are elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Gates told the story of a recent two-day visit with friends. The conversation kept coming back to two things: college basketball and investments \u2014 what was new in stocks, derivatives, mergers, and other financial instruments.<\/p>\n

Gates had to wonder: \u201cCouldn\u2019t we be having that same conversation about what makes a great teacher?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Seattle-born billionaire loves a good book, movie, basketball game \u2014 or investment \u2014 as much as anyone, he said. But there is a social cost.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of our best minds are going to sports or entertainment or finance,\u201d said Gates, and the genius of science is often turned toward remedies for baldness in a world desperate for cheap vaccines.<\/p>\n

There are exceptions and signs of hope, he said, mentioning the work at Harvard of George Whitesides<\/a> (nanoscale science) and Paul Farmer<\/a> (medical care), \u201can exemplar,\u201d said Gates, \u201cwho\u2019s drawn a lot of people into global health.\u201d<\/p>\n

And 324 members of the Class of 2010 at Harvard \u2014 18 percent of seniors \u2014 have applied for jobs with Teach for America<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In his own college days, said Gates, few people were aware of, for instance, food and health problems on a global scale. Nor were they aware that their careers could be steered toward doing good.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fell into computers at the age of 13,\u201d he said of his career path, and loved the idea that computers \u201cscared other people. That attracted me.\u201d<\/p>\n

As it turned out, that kind of work has social merit, said Gates, offering the world new ways to get information through personal computers and the Web.<\/p>\n

But there is still an imbalance between what people do and what the world needs, he said. Gates suggested to a questioner later, \u201cThe allocation of IQ to Wall Street is higher than it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a businessman\u2019s incisive brevity (his talk lasted 24 minutes), Gates focused on two major problems: global health and American education. He discussed how much can be achieved in those areas by bringing the brightest minds to bear on them.<\/p>\n

Global health has improved in the last five decades, and some progress can be attributed to rising wealth, said Gates. In 1960, about 20 million children under age 5 died from preventable diseases. Last year, fewer than 9 million did.<\/p>\n

The biggest reason for declining death rates came from one of medicine\u2019s strongest weapons, vaccines, though they remain \u201ca tiny part of the investment we make in medicine,\u201d said Gates. (The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation<\/a> has pledged more than $10 billion to develop and deliver new vaccines in the next decade.)<\/p>\n

About half a million people die each year from flu-like rotaviruses. There are vaccines but \u201cno large market,\u201d said Gates. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t getting out, it wasn\u2019t getting done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once a country\u2019s health picture improves, parents tend to have fewer children. Add in improvements such as female literacy, farm productivity, and other \u201ccatalytic\u201d steps, and escaping \u201cthe poverty trap\u201d is possible, said Gates. He cited the efficacy of early, inexpensive aid interventions in South Korea, Mexico, and Brazil.<\/p>\n

As for American education, Gates said it has slipped from the gains of 1945-1975, and now 30 percent of entering high school freshmen do not graduate \u2014 a figure that is 50 percent for minorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really need to improve this,\u201d said Gates. \u201cThe other rich countries are doing a lot better,\u201d and they spend less.<\/p>\n

But there is room for hope, he said, pointing to research being done at Harvard and elsewhere on what makes the strongest teachers, and how to pass along their best practices.<\/p>\n

In education, online learning will help improve the situation, with links to videos on key concepts, along with ways to develop online advising, forums, and testing. \u201cThat\u2019s a very doable thing,\u201d said Gates. \u201cTechnology is going to have a role there.\u201d
\nAnd innovative education does not have to cost a lot, he said, referring to his sometimes controversial support of charter and nontraditional solutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I get discouraged,\u201d he told one questioner later, \u201cI go to a KIPP school and say: This can be done.\u201d KIPP<\/a> stands for the Knowledge is Power Program, a network of college-preparatory U.S. public schools that Gates said now number 82 \u2014 and that send 95 percent of their graduates to four-year colleges.<\/p>\n

A lot of other problems cry out for innovation and modest investments, he said, including energy and good governance. But underlying such matters is a single \u201cmeta-question,\u201d Gates emphasized. \u201cHow do we get the brightest people onto the biggest problems?\u201d<\/p>\n

The audience members at Sanders had a few questions of their own.<\/p>\n

Which is better, asked one man: Take a high-paying job and give to a good cause, or take a job in the nonprofit sector?<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth models work,\u201d said Gates, who outlined one scenario: Work, but study one problem or country, and devote extra resources to that. \u201cThen when you get lots of time,\u201d he said, \u201cyou can get even more involved.\u201d
\nSome of the queries were \u2014 don\u2019t we all want to ask? \u2014 self-serving. One questioner asked Gates to meet him on vacation in 2012. Too busy, said the billionaire. Another touted a friend\u2019s nontraditional malaria cure. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely a long shot,\u201d said Gates, though long shots sometimes work out.<\/p>\n

Another man, a would-be applicant to the Harvard Kennedy School<\/a>, got even more personal. \u201cSo my question is: Can you pay for me?\u201d he asked Gates. \u201cI\u2019m one of the best students in Kazakhstan<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The billionaire dropout was ready. \u201cI applaud your boldness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Henry \u201cBill\u201d Gates III dropped out of Harvard College in 1975 in the fall of his junior year. Barely 20, he went on to build the computer giant Microsoft, an entrepreneurial feat that earned him billions and helped to usher in the Internet age. Gates came back to Harvard today (April 21), this time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-537988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}