Carnegie Mellon University
Press Roundtable
Bill Gates
February 21, 2008
BILL GATES: And they gave me the Carnegie Chair. That's a pretty special deal.
QUESTION: Got any idea where you're going to put it?
BILL GATES: I've got an office that I'm actually moving to a new office this summer. So I'll definitely find a great place for it there.
QUESTION: Where is that?
BILL GATES: Well, I'll have an office at Microsoft, because I'll be there about a day a week. And then I've got an office at the Foundation. But then I have one that's kind of my just neutral office for whatever I'm doing. So that's actually in Bellevue, actually in Kirkland, I guess.
QUESTION: You guys want to start?
QUESTION: Yes. Actually, I was that crowd in there, I've never seen a turnout like that at Carnegie Mellon before. They had to put the chairs in that room because the auditorium was too small. So you're like a rock star to some of these students. Is this a role that you appreciate, or if you had it to do differently, would you not be so visible to them?
BILL GATES: Well, rock stars are rock stars. I actually know a rock star. And when I was at Bono's last concert in Honolulu, and after the concert we were all hanging around, and I thought, okay, now it's going to get exciting. And one of the band members said, I'm really disappointed there's no milk here. I was like, this is it. Anyway, so maybe being a rock star is not what it's cracked up to be. I don't know for sure.
The idea of for a lot of my career, the idea of going out and talking about personal computing, and software, and the importance of that, I've gone out and spoken a lot, and focused a lot of energy, which I think is partly because that's a great thing for Microsoft to talk about what's going on with software. I think actually an important message that's beneficial to get out there. Now that skill set is being also applied to get some of the messages of the Foundation out about the need for more generosity from rich world governments, and the desire to get kids involved. I gave two speeches recently that were much more Foundation focused, the Harvard commencement speech, which was June, and then the Davos World Economic Forum speech, which was Jan, that was the creative capitalism speech. Actually, I used the phrase "creative capitalism" in the June speech, and people said, what the heck did I mean. I said, oh, what the heck did I mean. That's what the Davos speech was, at least version one, of trying to articulate how particularly business actors can be more of a role, even though it's not that obvious to people.
So being very visible may have come just with the wealth alone, even if I never gave a single speech, I think there would have been some focus on that. And, you know, it's had a positive side that I've gotten to meet and get to know great people, and hopefully some of the things I say are helpful to young people as they think about what they want to do. So it's got a positive side to it. It's got a negative side to it as well, but I would say the positives, at least so far, outweigh the negatives.
The main thing, you know, I think in terms of negatives, my children get some of that not being treated in a normal way. I get the benefit. I get to meet Nelson Mandela, and have fun with Bono, so for me I can't complain. They get some of the strangeness without nearly the same direct upside, and that makes we try to minimize that, but I feel a little bad about that piece of it.
QUESTION: How old are your kids now?
BILL GATES: Eleven, eight and five.
QUESTION: I have a couple of questions that regard students here. First of all, the Gates Center is going up, and I want to know if you've had a chance to review the plans for the Gates Center, and specifically I want to know, what do you hope it will do for the campus? I mean, it's going to bring CS from a dark, dungeon building into the light, give everybody an office. It's going to be an excellent facility. I want to know what you hope it will do for the campus?
BILL GATES: Well, Carnegie Mellon has made huge contributions to computer science over all, and Microsoft has had a great relationship, and we get great students, great collaborative research goes on. So helping the university to do more, it seemed very fitting that I would help out with that. One of my colleagues, Rick Rashid, who runs Microsoft Research helped out with part of it, which was wonderful to see. And I'm sure they'll get other Microsoft people joining in on that. I'm not an expert on architectural design, or anything like that. So, to be frank, the first time I saw the specifics of how they were laying it out is, I saw the model here. For all I know, it looks great. I hope it makes a big difference in terms of their ability to attract great people, and be more ambitious. The President said it would be done something like Fall '09, so I don't know if I'll be there then, but sometime I'll come and see it in person.
QUESTION: And the second question I had regarding students is, you talked about the interdisciplinary ways that professional computer scientists are working with basically specifically the sciences. You spoke about brain science, and things like that. How can we sort of embed that into the curriculum, embed that into the undergraduate curriculum? Right now, it's segregated, and they're going to have to work, computer scientists are going to have work with other people, and other people are going to have to work with computer scientists. How do we embed that into the curriculum?
BILL GATES: It's getting very tricky that the number of things somebody would say, yes, every undergraduate should know X, X is pretty large. Today I got up on the stage and said, X should include knowing that poor people live in very tough conditions, and some understanding of that. Should that be a required course? Well, I vote yes. Should a certain level of mathematics be required? People would vote yes. A certain understanding of countries other than the U.S., or the history of conflict? We can get a pretty long list of required things. And when we say know computer science, computer science has gotten very broad. Are we talking about database, machine learning, theory of algorithms, graphics?
What you really kind of want to do, and it's tricky, is take a few problems and have the student go in-depth and really understand that one problem. So they understand, okay, here's what software can do, here's what's hard about it, here's where it's advanced. And you'd kind of like to do that in some part of history where they get to know enough about that one part to say, okay, this leader had certain choices, and things happened in a certain way. So you want very and that's where they get in-depth. Designing the curriculum that can create that right broad exposure, that's not an easy thing. I would saying to the fact today that these courses that are going online, and encouraging them to do even more of that, that that at least gives you a chance, particularly after you've been a student, if there's something you want to learn, go out for it. I'm a great consumer of those things. There's actually a commercial company called Teach12.com that has these DVDs you can buy and watch, but I got all the science DVDs, and so now I'm lucky, just as I finished my last one of those, then all these courses are coming up online.
Anyway, the way you do this interdisciplinary thing, and get biologists to know software, and astronomers to know software, different universities are trying out different ways of doing it, it's being much discussed. MIT has an approach, Stanford has an approach, Princeton has an approach, CMU has an approach. We should try quite a variety of things. The danger is that you end up getting people to be so broad that they don't really know any of the things that they "took a course in."
QUESTION: You've talked before about increasing competitiveness for computer science in America, and the importance of more people getting into that. But this is a perfect campus, and Berkeley is another one, to show, you've got a huge percentage of Asian-born students, and Asian-American students. And so I'm wondering if you think part of the solution to this is to do something about the immigration laws, and the status of people who are graduating from these schools, and their ability to stay in this country?
BILL GATES: Absolutely. We're hopefully the loudest voice out there saying how insane it is that these hyper-qualified students that, at least in an indirect sense, the U.S. government has very much supported their learning, that they are forced to go, leave the U.S., and that for every engineer four or five jobs are going to be created around that engineer. Wherever you put the engineer to do software development, you're going to put testers, managers, marketers, and various people, and so you're not just exporting that one job, which entry level students can make $90,000 a year. So these are good taxpayers. This country turns them away. We actually created a facility up in Vancouver, because the Canadian government, I don't know, somehow they like people who make high salaries. And I don't know what's wrong with them. But, anyway, this (h)(1)(B) issue, or insanity you could say, if there was just one thing that I think the Congress could do about competitiveness that is purely a win is to allow highly qualified people to come into this country. What is the greatest advantage this country has, is it that our legal costs are lower, and medical costs are lower, our defense costs are low? Maybe not. Maybe it's because the smartest people in the world, some reasonable percentage want to come here, and work here, and that we get a critical mass in computer science and biology, and that's been our competitive edge. Naturally, yes, other countries are doing better at their universities, but we shouldn't be throwing it away by forcing unnaturally people to leave who want to stay.
QUESTION: And the corollary question I have is, on the other end of the demographic scale, there's this really growing gap within America in computer literacy, and academic ability, even in any kind of appreciation for the value of education. And I know that the Gates Foundation is more focused on the poorest parts of the world right now, but I now you also have educational stuff going on, so what do you think are some of the best ways to try and tackle that because it's becoming a bigger and bigger divide, I think, don't you?
BILL GATES: Well, the divide, people are becoming more aware of the divide. Just one fact that you probably know, but it's worth your readers knowing, the majority, all the top computer science departments in the U.S. are over 50 percent foreign born. So when we talk about sending people away, we're not talking about 10 percent of the computer science department, we're talking about the majority of it. Anyway, just to dimensionalize that it's not a tiny thing. You ask people to raise the hands in that audience, which of you will be forced to leave our country, and you'd have a lot of hands.
Anyway, education is not a sort of simple topic. It was actually the Gates Foundation that funded this thing to get people to really acknowledge what the dropout rate was. Dropout rates were always stated based on who started senior year and didn't finish senior year. The reason was that an individual high school could think, hey, all those kids who left after ninth grade, maybe they went to some other high school, we don't know, don't blame us, maybe they didn't drop out. But, of course, most of them did, they didn't go to another high school, there wasn't even the tracking to understand that.
So we had the Urban Institute do this thing that said, greater than 30 percent drop out rate, minorities greater than 50 percent. People said, no, that can't be. But, it is, and it's really in high schools that we really start to let students down. I mean, yes, there are some great things that need to be done before that.
Anyway, our foundation has picked high schools. We have over 1,000 high schools that have been done under a new design, and we have a lot of learnings there, what's worked, what hasn't worked. The country has 17,000 high schools, and so we've done 1,000. Our two biggest locations are New York and Chicago, but we do them in a lot of places. Microsoft actually did this school of the future here in Pennsylvania.
QUESTION: In the Philadelphia area?
BILL GATES: Yes, Pennsylvania, and that's a brilliant piece of work, and that was actually more Microsoft helping with advice. Financially it was the government. We gave some free software and things, and some time, and all that, but they did it. It's a very nice piece of work. We sent people from all over the country to see what was done there. Now, in many cases you're not building new facilities. There are places like New Orleans they are, Nevada they are, but some places we have to deal with the old infrastructure.
QUESTION: So what's worked the best? I know it's such a broad topic. What are a couple of things that seem to really have disproportionate impact?
BILL GATES: Well, contrary to what the public thinks, actually testing is the only way that you know what's working, and it's a very necessary thing. That creates this hot potato. If you do testing, then you get these schools that are clearly disastrous, and then people say, this is a hot potato, do you know how we'll solve this? Let's stop testing, because it's making us all really feel bad. The teachers are feeling bad, the principles are feeling bad, the politicians are feeling bad, we've got to stop testing. That's sort of the sentiment they don't say it that way, but that really is what it means. No, there's something that the test doesn't measure. Really? No. In the world you actually need to add numbers, there's no optionality of these understandings.
Anyway, our designs are basically about there are teachers who do well, and if you measure that you see what they do well, and you reinforce those best practices. So you create incentive systems around good teaching. And in the system broadly, that willingness to really even tell a teacher, how did my students, what happened to them in the test, so each teacher can know, your students only improved a little bit, my students improved a lot. Well, this is what I do, I should know that I'm good. Even, say, it's not in the salary, they don't even tell them. It's a secret.
Now, a few states are willing to take the data and that can then be studied, and even, it's radical, let teachers know how well they're doing. And so there are things about we have generally less you take less subjects, it's more project oriented. The schools are smaller. The student ratio, the teacher-student ratio is not that much different, but the environment, the social environment is much smaller. So every student is recognized as they walk around. It means a high school typically of about 600, which is very different, a lot of high schools are 3,000 or so, and so people don't know who is who, or where they're supposed to be, or what they did or didn't do. Anyway, there is a fair bit of this on our Web site, and we're still learning a lot.
The government's model that we've gotten involved in is where somebody actually has responsibility. So the Mayor of New York is responsibility, the Mayor of Chicago has responsibility, the Mayor of D.C. has responsibility. If you go for a sort of committee group, then each of those people kind of represent a special interest, don't teach evolution, or I'm in the union, so let's just do the union the accountability relative to the student's needs are strongest when a mayor has put himself up and said, this is I'll succeed or die on education. Bloomberg did it, and Fenty is doing it, Daley is doing it.
QUESTION: I'm going to go a whole different direction. I'm just curious, do you read a newspaper, a physical newspaper, where do you think media is going?
BILL GATES: Well, we don't have this nice, thin tablet yet. As soon as we have that I won't do much paper-based. I'm a real mix of online and paper-based. The Journal I read mostly online, because I can get it at night, and I can navigate, and then I send articles to people and put comments on them. The Economist I still read, because it's less urgent, I read in paper. Most of the books I read, I read in paper, they're not even online.
QUESTION: And you have a project going to create that kind of thin
BILL GATES: Yes, absolutely. We're not a hardware company, but we're working with the people who do display technology, and it's getting closer and closer. There are tablet computers. They're a little heavier, a little more expensive. My daughter, as I said, goes to a school where the math textbook is on the disk. There's no paper involved. And their ability to interact and solve things is unbelievable. My daughter just does it with a pen. As soon as she gets the homework back, which the teacher has written on in digital ink, if she wants to forward it to me, I see it by the time we're sitting there at dinner. I know what she needs advice on, or kudos on.
QUESTION: Do you help with the homework?
BILL GATES: Yes.
QUESTION: I have a question, online learning, that was what I was going to ask about. You were talking about online courses that you enjoy so much. I was going to ask, is there a lack of interaction there? You don't have a professor that's standing right there that you can ask a question to. Is this sort of functionality you were just talking about the way you get that interaction back?
BILL GATES: As I said, education is three pieces: The kind of reading/lecture piece, which is absorbing material; there's the discussion group lab piece, which is a set of people asking their questions and interacting; and then finally there's some accreditation testing that says, hey, you really do know something. And these pieces each you should think what's the ideal model for each of them separately. They don't have to be packaged together the way they are.
So when I'm learning solid-state physics, I'm watching the lectures, that's the lecture piece. I actually have the textbook, but I haven't looked at that yet, I may. I've got the homework. For this one, I have a few friends who know this stuff, so my study group is kind of unusual, I can e-mail Nathan Myhrvold or Lowell Wood, and these are genius physicists and they straighten me out pretty quickly. So that is usually done face to face. Some people could try to do it online, with cameras and things, so even that piece people will try to do that.
The question is, as you move down different tiers of education, for Carnegie Mellon, yes, those three should be bundled together, but as you move down, let's say, all the way to community colleges, take the intro biology course, should they take Nowicki, who is this brilliant biology lecturer at Duke and just have his lectures play, and then the people they hire are good at the study group, at the discussion, at the lab, not trying to make it do what he does. I think there will be a change there. Now, that hasn't happened yet. There's real momentum of the status quo, in terms of how things are done, this is more at the college level. As you get down to lower grades, it's all kind of this study group, discussion thing. There's almost not the lecture piece at all.
QUESTION: I have to say we are so close. The news of the day, Microsoft is putting its technology, or its software
BILL GATES: Interoperability.
QUESTION: Why?
BILL GATES: For us we have this very low-cost platform, and we're always trying to get people to move away from mainframes down onto the Windows platform, to simplify things by using the Windows platform. So connecting up with other computers and other software, this big word interoperability, is pretty much good for us. Now, users like the fact that they can move onto our system, and they also like at least the feeling that if they chose to they could move off of our system. So publishing document formats, and protocols, those are just these terms to make it easy to move on, and if you ever chose to do so, easy to move off.
So we created a customer group two years ago to talk, we said, okay, we're going to take time to really listen to you, show that we execute on these things. We had governments, and corporations, and said, where don't we have interoperability that you want us to have it? And so we talked to them, and a few specifics came out of that. We did those, and then we ran it by them. Then I did these principles of how we would, for all products that meet certain criteria, publish the protocols, the file formats, and things like this. So today's announcement is those principles that we worked out with those customers.
QUESTION: So is the idea to enable people in businesses to develop their own applications using your software? What's the
BILL GATES: No, more people would say, if you want to use a competitive system in the future, or it helps you run heterogeneous a mix of systems, if you choose to. Say you want to have some Linux systems and some Windows system, now we've really made that easy already, but this says even for new things we'll make that particularly easy.
QUESTION: So it doesn't have to do with the EU and their
BILL GATES: It absolutely relates to some of the things the EU has been saying to Microsoft, hey, you should publish more. We were always publishing a whole ton of stuff, that's partly why we think some of these things are a little unusual. But, it says, even for future things we'll be doing this.
So it's not this was not there wasn't some specific thing that the EU asked us to do, but it does relate to the EU issues. It's something we think makes sense globally. We didn't announce it just for the EU, that's their jurisdictions limit. We announced it globally, but and we probably would have done it. Maybe the timing would have been different. The fact of getting it out public about how we think about these principles, the EU was just one of the factors that came into that.
QUESTION: I hate to do it, but I think we do need to wrap it up, so they can move on.
BILL GATES: Okay. All right.
QUESTION: Thank you very much. My mother is going to be proud of me.
BILL GATES: It was fun.
