[jbrichter]

The traditional student is better educated. Presumably (s)he is motivated and interested in certain classes too. The difference is the computer student avoids doing anything (s)he doesn't feel like doing. Living according to your whims is not taking it on yourself to be responsible.

Second of all, it's not like Thrun left a comfy life in the ivory tower to get with the times. The WSJ article says he was an adjunct. It's not surprising he left a dead-end job to join a startup.

I'd also say that if you're not learning outside of your immediate narrow interests, you're not really learning. Is learning an 8th programming language once you already know 7 a bigger learning experience than taking a course in chemistry when you know none?

Boring (to you) required classes have two purposes: to be truly educated you need breadth, and for a degree to be worth anything on the job market it should demonstrate that you can suck it up and do unpleasant tasks. If you don't care about either of those and just want to stick with what you know and like, why the hell are you in school anyway?

[d_mland]

You make a fair point. However, what I was more trying to get at was the fact that a lot of students are learning for the test and forget 90% of what they learned after the test. My solution to this was to try and eliminate the topics unnecessary to their degree and interest (the ones they only learn for the test) to allow more time to take wider breadth of courses that interest them along with their major required course work. For instance, if I only need certain topics in chemistry to graduate instead of a full semester class, this would allow me, as an engineer for instance, take a class on Roman architecture if that is something that interests me. In this way you are still getting a breadth of knowledge but the knowledge your getting is determined by you as the student and not by some outside curriculum. Institutes like Brown University already offer programs that allow students more control over where they want to take their education. The problem is institutions like this are to far and few between.