Danny Crichton

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

Roman, Byzantine, British. These are among the great empires of European history, the groups that influenced the development of entire centuries of human existence. Despite all of their glories and riches, they eventually receded from prominence, their power waning in a long struggle against decline. The question of this decade, and indeed so far this century, is a simple one: Will America be added to that list of former powers?

Ask that question to an American today and the response will likely be yes, according to a recent Rasmussen poll. The zeitgeist of the past two years has been clear they say, and their response has been equally strong and focused. The Tea Party movement is a direct consequence of that belief in America's decline, a demand to look in the rearview mirror to the 50s, 80s and 90s and search for the soul of a nation that was once ebullient and prosperous.

Who is to blame them? The future seems to be a tremendously frustrating and depressing venture. The economy I see is undergoing creative destruction, but the emphasis so far has tilted heavily toward destruction. Entire industries have been forced aside, while nascent industries have failed to take hold. It is not a pretty sight.

In the past, graduating college meant entering a world of opportunity and growth. The humanities were flourishing, science and technology were seeing tremendous growth, the social sciences were experiencing fundamental advances and businesses the world over were experiencing flush profits. American dynamism was exhilarating.

Today, few members of my generation will stay with one employer throughout their lifetimes. In lieu of stable employment and some semblance of

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

Introspection is an important trait, but how can one write an obituary for the past decade? The typical lament that comes with eulogizing the end of something dear tends to be positive, but really, the first decade of the new millennium was a real loser in the span of American history.

So instead of looking backwards at the hellish morass we just left behind, I am going to take the opportunity to play Miss Cleo and identify the top ten news stories of the coming decade. Events abound - a couple more presidential elections, another season of American Idol, the end of the world perhaps. The true stories of change in the coming decade are going to be subtler, but far more important.

In higher education, the tuition bubble of the past two decades will crash, beginning a second wave of realignments across universities. In the process, the core mission of universities will become more specialized as unpopular programs and tenure lines are cut. Long term, a renaissance of higher education is in order, focusing on more interdisciplinary skills and higher standards.

Students entering universities will be better prepared than their predecessors due to the new K-12 Core Standards currently close to implementation. As teachers begin to teach math and science skills again in American public schools, the country will note a general improvement in international test scores and an influx of new STEM majors in universities.

Those STEM majors will continue developing automated systems that replace humans in more and more industries. First it was the cashiers at Wal-Mart, but soon it will be your local lawyer. The bread and butter cases of

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

Last week, I had the pleasure of hearing from Bruce Alberts, former head of the National Academy of Sciences and the current editor of the journal Science, discuss science education and his own path in graduate school.

After years of arduous work, he became the first person in his department's history at Harvard to fail a dissertation defense. For most, their careers would be finished. Over the course of the next year, however, he found new mentors and new meaning in his work, and Alberts managed to earn his doctorate and eventually discover many of the proteins behind DNA replication. Today, his textbook is the "bible" of the field.

It is a wonderful success story, but few students fail at the dissertation stage. They abandon science when they are in grade school or when they take their first introductory university class. They leave before anyone knew they were there in the first place. How many students abandon the sciences like Alberts, but never had a mentor to bring them back?

Allow me to speak from experience. I came to Stanford with two potential majors checked on the new student adviser sheet - biology and political science. I have managed to cover those areas well, but something changed over the past two years.

I started taking political science classes when I arrived at Stanford, but by winter quarter, I had rekindled my interests in the life sciences. I had no idea that it was already too late - chemistry is only offered once a year. While it did not help that my adviser was a political science professor, I had no one to

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

They represent forty percent of today's college graduates (and only 44% of incoming students). They will soon hold a minority of the nation's jobs - a development that has already taken place in many urban cities. Future job growth is taking place in health care and education - not construction.

Men are living in a world far different from the one that existed just a few decades ago. The nation has finally moved toward a more equal coexistence of the genders, but in the process, it has transformed gender roles. From the breadwinner of the family to the parent who tucks in the kids at night, roles are amorphous like they have never been before.

Unfortunately, Stanford and most universities do not provide an outlet to ask questions from a male perspective. We have six community centers on campus, but none of them have the defined mission to address the issues that men are likely to face. In response, I urge Stanford to establish a male community center.

According to Stanford's Undergraduate Life page, "Stanford Community Centers provide a gateway to intellectual, cultural and leadership opportunities for all Stanford students." In pursuit of these missions, community centers hold programming events and provide advising resources to ask questions related to different identified groups.

These centers are not zero sum. The existence of another community center should only enhance current ones by covering another demographic group (and a large one at that). The beauty of the community centers is their synergistic nature, and a male community center will not undermine this system.

A male community center would enhance the university community first and foremost

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

A few years ago during those quaint stock market boom years, there was a debate in Congress over the value of elite college institutions in America. Senator Charles Grassley, the chair and later ranking minority leader of the Senate Finance Committee, attacked well-endowed schools like Stanford who bring in enormous income from fundraising and investments yet continue to aggressively raise tuition.

During that time, he brought into clarity an important question that an institution like Stanford must continually answer: how well are we serving the public?

For Stanford, there has been an obligation to assist the public interest from our very founding. As part of the founding grant, Stanford's mission is "… to promote the public welfare by exercising an influence in behalf of humanity and civilization." Thus, the question posed goes directly to the core mission of the university.

Stanford is considered a non-profit educational institution, and thus does not pay taxes on endowment income or alumni donations that would amount to millions of dollars lost per year. The university also receives federal research grants totaling a little less than a billion dollars per year. These enormous subsidies make Stanford accountable to the public.

The legitimacy of the question is clear, but how to measure public interest is not. A complex institution like a university cannot be pigeonholed into a couple of metrics, regardless of what the editors of U.S. News would have us believe. A further question to ask is whether Stanford must excel in every area with regard to the public interest, or whether it can excel at some and not others.

Evaluating Stanford by its own arguments is

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

Last week, I dropped my first class at Stanford, bringing myself down from twenty to my new record low of fifteen units. Since then, I have done something that I have not done since arriving at Stanford two years ago: I read a book not required for class.

I also ran for the first time since early September. I had a wonderful time considering my graduate school options, debating honors thesis topics, and had time to read the textbook for class. I even started to sleep more - almost have the average up to six hours. I have not felt so stress-free since I had a full-time job.

Shortly after, I had a conversation with a friend of mine from freshman year, a computer science major. He looked a little haggard when I ran into him, and for good reason. He was completing two problem sets, a written response paper and a take-home midterm, all for a single class. He was averaging 3-4 hours of sleep a night.

Every day does not bring such a delicious schadenfreude moment, so I talked about all the things I had been doing since dropping that one class. He responded with a line that I have now heard from three different people this week: "Danny, I wish I had time to think."

According to people wiser than me, college is one of the most formative times in a person's life. The openness of campus, the wealth of resources, the diversity of opinions and thought can shape the thinking of individuals for their entire lives. What happens, though, when there simply is no time to take advantage

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

The leaves are turning colors, and the rain has already begun to fall. It is autumn again at Stanford, and that means another admissions season is about to begin for seniors not quite ready to move on to the "working" world.

One of the degrees available is the doctor of philosophy, or PhD, commonly the highest degree attainable in a field. The degree uniquely forces its candidates to become world experts on a highly defined subject. There is also a darker side to this degree that few universities wish to discuss: the PhD is a disaster, and little evidence exists that the situation will improve in the near term.

Last week, I wrote a column deploring the trend of America's best students leaving careers of invention and discovery for careers in consulting. An element underlining the problem is that strong candidates for PhD programs are choosing to pursue other options instead of more education. Knowingly or not, these students are making the right decision today.

After spending years in a doctorate program, graduates are offered few options on the academic job market. The doctorate is a research degree that prepares its candidates exclusively for research - a profession that takes place in few institutions outside of academia. Budget cuts have reduced the number of tenure-line positions, limiting potential positions to record lows.

The number of open positions for history doctorate holders, for example, is almost one for every five graduates, a trend seen across departments in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Even worse, once a graduate has failed at finding a position, search committees will often ignore that person for

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

Last week's hubbub over the Nobel Peace Prize nearly shrouded a far more interesting story about the Nobel Prize in Physics. The prize this year was awarded to three scientists for their research into CCD sensors - the device that underlies most digital cameras.

Two of the three researchers who made the discovery worked at Bell Labs, one of the premier basic research institutions in the country. Or at least it was. The storied history of the labs, including its now seven Nobel Prize wins, ended last year when parent company Alcatel-Lucent decided to shut them down.

The story of Bell Labs is a truly American one about the technological greatness of the past discarded in the drive for profit. Unfortunately, one needs to look no further than the aspirations of Stanford students to see that this disappointing trend will not be disappearing.

Ask graduates (or even prospective freshman) about their dream job, and a depressing truth becomes evident: the most desired positions are in finance and management consulting. Even in the wake of the largest economic meltdown in decades, students throng for industries that advise, rather than create.

The hard numbers are difficult to refute at peer institutions as well. At Princeton, 60% of graduates who find full-time employment will go into these industries. At MIT, 40% do the same, although neither number accounts for those students who pursue higher degrees before entering these industries.

Bill Gates recognized the allure of these industries, and attempted to draw a wider cross-section of America into science and technology through scholarship grants. Yet, many of those at Stanford receiving grants are giving up 10-year fellowships in