One major difference between Caltech and many other schools is that Caltech is a technical school, and doesn't provide a liberal arts education. An underlying assumption of the article is the superiority of the technical education vs. liberal arts, but the evidence he provides that this is actually the case is rather thin: the author seems to expect the reader to accept this point of view by default. It would have been better if the author could have made this argument explicitly.
Although Caltech isn't a liberal arts school, undergrads are required to take one humanities or social science class every term (for a total of 12). You occasionally see Caltech alumni with a BS in Literature...
