Bill Ackman on America’s ‘Educational Divide’

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Bill Ackman on America's 'Educational Divide'

Bill Ackman, Pershing Square Capital founder & CEO, offers insight on upward mobility in America. “We have a bit of an educational divide,” he tells CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

yeah. but you wouldn’t participate mark zuckerberg? he’s only 25. we had all those guys on last week. all those disrupters. all those guys are saying you can be that and no one is saying that you can’t. the entire generation is moving upwards in the ladder. not just the stars, not just the shoot for the moon approach. and i’m curious where bill comes out on that. we have a bit of an educational divide. mark zuckerberg, he left harvard, but he had a good education before he got that. if you think about the last 20 years, i think what’s happened is technology has made — there were very good jobs that paid well that didn’t require a college degree. and there’s less and less of that now because of changes technology. you’re a charter school guy? charters schools can be a option. charter schools fail in areas where public schools do not. it’s more of a pay for performance. you see hard it is, randy wine guard mer. any type of accountability is the chafe. they’re so resistant to — the charter school moment, the best school about it, i think, charter schools are not going to solve the educational problems. why do you think teachers wouldn’t want to be evaluated? and why do you think, you know, automatic ten year and three imagine if you ran a business and you had to tenure employees? it would be europe from day one. tenure is auto problem. the knee jerk progressive reaction is more money needs to be thrown at the problem and don’t even touch the public schools. and the same thing is true in the university system. i think tenured positions don’t make sense. it’s not — it’s the only place where we do it. but in the university system, there’s a lot more competition. it’s where you have the most free markets, not enough, and that’s where you see the gatest desire for people to come from overseas. explain this, though. higher education costs have skyrocketed in crazy ways and it’s supposedly a competitive market. no, because it’s overly subsidized by the u.s. government. that’s an interesting answer. there’s a big debate about student loans last week. when you subsidize things that people desperately want, they get more — i think part of it is board and universities are in a competitive — up until now, they haven’t thought about the costs. although i think it’s starting to change. how aboutting a law degree online for, you know, ten grand where i’ve heard it positive that you don’t even need the investment. if you’re tested outside of, you know, the — if you go to a place where you need to be everything. actually, it’s start to go happen. why aren’t you going to invest it? do you know if you follow the khan academy where you can download lessons on youtube. if you think about a world in which you get a smartphone that costs $100. it’s a google android smartphone. as long as you have bandwidth, you can educate yourself. stab ford, by the way, offered a course apparently, they offered it for free. i think it was on — whether it’s software engineering or whatever. 150,000 people signed up for the class. real quick, hong kong dollar. that was your big call. hasn’t come true just yet. how are you thinking about it? i think it’s still a good bet. we still have it on. every time i mention it, someone in hong kong tells me i’m going to lose a lot of money. but what we like about it is if you own the options, it’s a 50 to 80 to 1 payoff, right? so even if you renew the bet every 18 months to two years, one day you’re going to be happy. but i think it’s actually — you know, i think the hong kong dollar is a good place to put some money. so instead of keeping your money treasury mope market account earning zee rob one you can earn a higher yield. i think it will appreciate. that’s a lower risk way to make that. you won’t get 80 to 1, but one day you’ll wake up and get 30%. in the meantime, you’ll get a little interest. thank you. thanks for having me. vote the blue proxy, though. it’s like a blue pill. it’s like a blue pill. you don’t know what i’m talking about? i don’t know what you’re talking about. vote the blue proxy and watch the stock.

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