Can a 21-year-old student force the resignation of the President of a university whose annual budget is bigger than the governments of 116 countries in the world? Stanford University student and young journalist Theo Baker has not only done this, but also exposed the game of profit, fraud and influence going on within this favorite university of Silicon Valley. In his new book ‘How to Rule the World’, Baker has exposed the dark truth of the moral degradation hidden behind the shining facade of Stanford University. Baker initially studied computer science and then turned his attention to the student newspaper ‘The Stanford Daily’. Acting as a fearless investigative journalist, he proved that there was massive data manipulation in the research papers of then President Marc Tessier-Lavine. This revelation caused a nationwide controversy and the President had to resign. Baker received the prestigious George Polk Award for courageous reporting. He became the youngest journalist to win it. According to the book, Stanford University has now become just a ‘big tech incubator with a football team’. The entire atmosphere here is driven by who can become a millionaire how quickly. University professors themselves are earning big money by becoming early investors in their own students’ startups. There are venture capitalists roaming around the campus all the time, looking to finance a student’s ‘next big idea’. According to Baker, students with a strong identity can easily get seven-figure funding even without a solid business idea. According to Baker, there is blind and violent competition among students on campus, where they are willing to cross every moral boundary. Values ​​like history, art and logical thinking have been left behind. The situation has become so bad that this joke has become common on the campus, the system here easily accepts ‘just a little cheating’. This is a serious warning for the higher education system: Sociologist According to Professor Philip Altbach, the founder of the ‘International Center for Higher Education’ at Boston College and a famous sociologist of higher education, this situation of Stanford is a serious warning for the modern higher education system. Pro. According to Altbach, ‘When universities become corporate factories instead of centers of knowledge and character development, they intellectually hollow out the society. What is happening at Stanford is evidence of how ‘rampant capitalism’ has swallowed up the very principles of education. Baker’s book is an important legal and moral document against this system.
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