Gates asks students to reach higher and solve world problems - Inside Bay Area

Gates asks students to reach higher and solve world problems - Inside Bay Area

• Are the brightest minds working on the most important problems?
• inequity in poor countries around the world and the challenge of education as among the most important problems
• The largest factor in the drop in child deaths, Gates said, was the spread of vaccines. But he cautioned that the problem is far from over.
• "One way of looking at it is: when I'm born, how old will I become before 20 percent of all the people born in the same year are dead? In the U.S., I'd be older than 60. In many countries, the age is 4," Gates said.
• "We've still done relatively little," he added. "We will need a lot of innovation. One of the major factors is that many vaccines need to be kept cold, and they're being delivered to countries where refrigeration is a challenge with no electricity being regularly generated or delivered there."
• If you start saving more people, won't there be population growth? That means educating, feeding and finding jobs for people will be more difficult. However, Gates said, citing a recent speech given by Swedish doctor and researcher Hans Gosling for the think-tank nonprofit group TED, "As you improve health in a society, very rapidly the birthrate drops. People become less concerned with having several children."
• while the U.S. used to boast some of the best education systems in the world. "Since 1975, by almost any metric, things have not improved, and in many ways they've gotten worse.
• In terms of achievement levels, the U.S. was the best of rich countries for a long time, and is now among the worst.
• Is it a time in your life when you could go off into these countries to help?

• Answering a question about what skills are most important to be of help, Gates said, "This is a good time to be multidisciplinary. At the (Bill & Melinda Gates) Foundation, it's great if you know the science, but that doesn't necessarily solve the problem. There are delivery issues. It helps to understand economics, and social resistance — how do you talk to mothers who don't want their children taking this weird vaccine? There are government aid issues, about how you convince local governments to help.

  "I'd recommend you learn about public health, government and politics, and communications," Gates said. "We're looking for hard-core specialists, but also a lot of generalists.

  "You won't be able to take all the courses you need to get there. A lot of that education will have to be you reading and learning on your own."