California’s school phones
California’s phone rule goes far enough
California is right to make every district write a phone policy and right to stop there, because future founders will need their attention more than their apps.
Terman
The next generation of founders, after Frederick Terman, the Stanford dean who pushed his students Hewlett and Packard into business.
AI and young workers
Too early to regulate AI over jobs
A Stanford study finds that young workers in AI-exposed jobs are being hired less, which is worth taking seriously, but the evidence is too thin to justify rules against the technology.
Thiel Fellowship
Students are right to stay on campus
Peter Thiel has doubled the price of dropping out just as AI makes small teams mighty, yet students are drifting back to campus, and on the evidence they are right to.
Australia’s social-media ban
Australia’s teen ban came too soon
Australia’s under-16 ban answers a real collective-action problem, but it fines platforms for an age check nobody has yet shown can work, and should have waited for the trial.
Student loans and the courts
Congress should fix student lending
The Supreme Court was right to stop the president cancelling $400bn of student debt alone, and Congress should now fix the lending that created it rather than bill taxpayers.
Skipping university
A degree is still the better bet
Americans are leaving college and starting firms at record rates, and cheap AI will make that trade more tempting, but a degree remains the better bet for most would-be founders.
ChatGPT in schools
Schools should teach ChatGPT, not ban it
New York’s ban on ChatGPT protects nothing it claims to protect, and schools would do better to teach pupils to catch the bot’s mistakes than to pretend it is not there.
Foreign students and America
America should keep its foreign students
America nearly told 1.1m international students to go home over a technicality, and the founders it would have lost are worth far more than the rule’s tidiness.
Campuses close
Universities must itemise their bill
The class of 2020 is learning that a degree bundles a lecture with a place and a crowd, and universities should now say which parts of the bill they are still delivering.
Student founders
Most founders should not drop out
Student debt makes skipping university look shrewd, but the best evidence says successful founders are closer to 45 than 19, so the case for dropping out is narrower than its fans claim.