College graduates work in every sector of the American economy, and the research engines incubated within our universities generate a wealth of ideas and innovations that have an enormous impact on our lives.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The social and economic impact of innovative American researchers, companies, and workers over the course of U.S. history have been enormous.
As much as we sometimes roll our eyes at the ivory-tower isolation of universities, they continue to serve as remarkable engines of innovation.
If you look at America, one of the great strengths of America is its university towns and the way a lot of their businesses and a lot of their innovation and enormous economic growth have come from reducing that gap, getting those universities directly involved in start-up businesses, green field businesses, new development businesses.
You looked at Stanford or Harvard, or the University of Colorado, these were powerful engines just turning out people ready to create and grow businesses.
Education is the investment our generation makes in the future.
If you look at where innovation - defined as ideas, not as commercial product - tends to live, the university system is remarkably innovative.
We know that a college degree is rapidly becoming the price of admission to the global economy.
The old university attitude of 'publish or perish' has changed. Students and academics are realising that institutions such as Imperial College are also wealth-generators. It is very satisfying to be in a university where you have the freedom to innovate and yet know that there is a path to translate your work into industry.
In the bubble decade, making money as an end in itself boomed as a calling among students at elite universities like Harvard, siphoning off gifted undergraduates who might otherwise have been scientists, teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs, artists or inventors.
College gives people learning and also takes away future opportunities by loading the next generation down with debt.