Gawker: valleywag, higher education

Elon Musk discovers cause of poverty

Owen Thomas — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:00:00 EST

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has strong opinions on what causes poverty: lack of education. For a Stanford dropout, that's remarkably self-reflective. We would add to Musk's list two other causes of poverty: funding a money-losing electric-car company and getting an expensive divorce.

Yale begs student startups to stay — except this guy

Paul Boutin — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:00:00 EDT

The Yale Entrepreneurial Institute is a program whipped up by the school to connect student-founded startups with the local business environment. The program's director hopes YEI "leaves students and potential students with the impression that Yale is an incubator for student-run businesses, just like Stanford or MIT." This is the program's second summer. Last year, four of the six startups in the program left for literally greener pastures. Yale should be careful what it wishes for. At a school known for its tradition of naked parties, shouldn't authorities be glad the program wasn't around to keep the pants-shedding likes of Justin.tv cofounder and Yale alum Justin Kan on campus?

Iowa city gives porn-delivery devices to 380 students

Jordan Golson — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:40:36 EDT

Central City, Iowa, is giving MacBooks to all students in 5th through 12th grades. Now, we're all for giving laptops to students — maybe some of them will read Valleywag — but let's be realistic. "The laptops will be strictly for school subjects, and will come equipped with filters and blockers." Yeah, right. It will be mere days before some enterprising student gets caught reading one of Melissa's informative posts on high-class escorts. Why not just let them get sex ed via YouPorn? That seems easier. (Photo by AP/Michael C. York)