Lessons From Dotcom U

from the education-doesn't-hurt dept

A column by a professor who says that a few years ago he was wondering whether or not higher education would really matter in this "new economy". He had students who were dropping out to get rich, and it seemed like you could learn all the technology you needed pretty quickly. But, now with everything failing, he suggests that liberal arts majors would do better running companies than techies - because they can be more creative. It's an interesting argument, and I definitely agree that having a broad education can certainly be helpful, but the fact is that the dot com mess wasn't due to just a bunch of techies. If anything it was former liberal arts majors who thought they could run businesses as well, despite no formal business experience or training. Plus (and now I'm nitpicking) the guy writing this is factually incorrect in a number of places. He says that 80% of dot coms in SF have gone out of business (whereas that's really a prediction of how many will go out of business by next year) and he talks about Yahoo expanding into porn without realizing that it's been weeks since they changed that decision.