Andy Kessler

WSJ: Get Your Daily-Deal Stocks-75% Off!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203335504578086643047833844.html

That didn't take long. In December 2010, Amazon invested $175 million for a minority stake in daily-deal site LivingSocial, right around the time rival Groupon turned down a $6 billion buyout offer from Google. The next big thing in selling online had arrived. Yet last week Amazon wrote down the value of its LivingSocial stake by $169 million, and Groupon's stock is down more than 75% from its initial public offering price of $20 a year ago. Apart from the cash on its balance sheet, Groupon is worth less than $2 billion. Pretty quick fall from grace.

Millions know that daily-deal sites collect emails and pitch 50% off local sky diving lessons or 40% off aromatherapy sessions if enough people sign up. So LivingSocial and Groupon were smack dab in the center of three hot trends: social, mobile and local. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a pretty good nose for what works. So why the return to earth?

First, neither LivingSocial nor Groupon was really a technology company even though both were valued like one. Groupon has 10,000 employees, most of whom are sales people who solicit deals and write up enticing offers. This doesn't scale well because if you want to grow in Cleveland, you have to hire lots of people in Cleveland.

CNBC: Is College a Waste?

Weekly Standard: Our 19th Century Curriculum

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/our-19th-century-curriculum_653241.html?nopager=1

Going off to college or, like me, sending your child? Suckers! Why? Because after paying average private college tuition and room and board of $28,500 a year (Harvard is now $54,500), over half of college graduates with bachelor degrees under the age of 25 don’t have jobs or are underemployed. Half! And this despite the 3.8 million job openings in the economy as of June. A whopping 1.5 million recent graduates just aren’t qualified for outstanding jobs—not a ringing endorsement of higher education.

What’s the problem? Most blame outsourcing or technology or the financial crisis. Forget it. Look no further than the huge disconnect between what colleges are turning out and what employers want in new hires. And the gap is widening. Sorry, but good old reading, writing, and ’rithmetic ain’t cutting it anymore.

Check out the adjoining test. It looks just like the math section of the SAT or ACT tests you sweated over for college admissions, right? Except this one is from the entrance exam for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—from 1869. What was so important back then? Simple, the Brooklyn Bridge started construction in January 1870 and every other city in America was itching to build a steel-wire suspension bridge. Designers and builders were the hot jobs and required understanding parabolas and quadratic equations.