It's Not Stanford. It's a 'Stanford Inside Stanford'

Stanford is a relatively ordinary college experience for most of its students, writes alum Theo Baker in the Atlantic. But for a "select few," it's something else entirely, a phenomenon Baker calls "Stanford inside Stanford." In this world, venture capital firms aggressively recruit 18- and 19-year-olds as they hunt for the next tech wunderkind. "These teenagers are sometimes handed 'pre-idea funding'—hundreds of thousands of dollars, or in rare cases, even millions—before they have the glimmer of an actual company in mind," writes Baker. "Plied with excess and access, they have little oversight; innovation and fraud co-develop. And all of this is happening as tech companies assume more power over our lives than ever before."

Baker traces how Stanford's deep entanglement with Silicon Valley has turned the university into what one instructor bluntly calls "an incubator with dorms." The article details the invite-only clubs, secret seminars (including one literally titled "How to Rule the World"), and a culture where networking and narrative can matter more than working technology—or ethics. Baker likens the situation to a modern-day California gold rush, with tech talent replacing gold nuggets as the resource to mine. A word of caution comes from former Stanford President and current Alphabet chair John Hennessy, who was once famously dubbed the "godfather of Silicon Valley." Undergrads who drop out thinking they will become the next Steve Jobs are playing a risky game, he warns, because most ventures will fail. Read the full story.