The Atlantic continues to post interesting stories on higher education. Here is a piece about how three high-level execs at leading tech companies view College (preview - the title is: "I don't want my children to go to College"). Eric Schmidt of google explains that there is a problem with what to do with 18-24 year olds - a warehousing problem - that means College will be around for a long time. Another executive (Buzzfeed president Jon Steinberg) laments that programming is the only useful skill that College graduates arrive with, and suggests internships would be better than College (for his own kids).

The Atlantic also led me to a presentation by another well-known tech leader, which is quite different. Bill Gates implicitly assumes that higher education leads to economic growth - and that Colleges and Universities aren't producing enough graduates. His slides suggest that we need to enhance graduation rates and that support for higher education needs to grow. Interesting contrast between a set of high-achieving college grads and a high-achieving college dropout...

Here are my conclusions: Higher education does more than warehouse young adults. Higher education could do more to develop skills that better-prepare them to achieve after college. Higher education is necessary for economic growth and higher education will be around for a long time. Continuous reexamination of higher education is the key for higher education sustainability.