Dive Summary:
- At Microsoft's annual two-day Faculty Summit, an event in which researchers gather to talk about computer science, co-founder Bill Gates addressed a number of topics, including education, during a presentation moderated by former Microsoft Research head Rick Rashid.
- Gates told those in attendance that with the highest higher-education dropout rate in the developed world, the U.S. education system is broken, and that MOOCs and other online education start-ups like Khan Academy can fix it.
- Though he touted online education's ability to give students unprecedented access to new areas of study and help physical institutions personalize learning, he added that it's still far from reaching its full potential, and that work needed to be done on understanding what makes an online course good and how to recreate lab experiences and study groups.
From the article:
... Gates acknlowedged during the session that some of his work might have unintended, negative consequences, but not this one. “In the education space,” he responded to a question from the audience, “I frankly don’t see that much of a downside.” ...