How can engineering schools not teach startups?

Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by uuilly on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @04:27AM (#37864)

If you had to design an engineering school from the ground up where the input was an 18 y/o w/ HS math + science and the output was a good engineer, it would look nothing like universities do today. Engineering is diced into its core components and those components are diced into their core components until you end up w/ a prof drawing lines and dots on a blackboard that have no connection to the lines and dots being drawn on all the other blackboards you saw that afternoon. All the while your goal is to predict what lines and dots will appear on the test in a month.

I don't deny the need for a thorough and disciplined understanding of math and physics. But... I didn't understand the need for calculus until I needed a way to go from pos/time to velocity/time. I didn't understand linear algebra until I needed to transform vertices in 3d graphics. Personally I don't understand a hammer unless I see the nail. Engineering school is all about showing you everything there is to know about a tool except what to use it for.

I think E-schools should be like obstacle courses where you have projects that REQUIRE understanding of a concept in order to complete them. Classes about said concepts are given as the NEED arises.

Most E-schools suck. Just take as many project based classes as possible (CS is decent for this) and get a degree. Universities also have lots of grants that nobody knows about where you can get money to build cool things.

Maybe this is just me, but I don't think I'm alone. And it probably explains why I failed to hang my pictures with a chainsaw.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by ecuzzillo on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @05:10AM (#37870)

You just described Olin, at least as I understood it from the visit.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by uuilly on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @05:21AM (#37872)

Right on. I wish I had gone to Olin...

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by alex_c on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @07:13PM (#38200)

A few years back I was talking to the Electrical and Computer Engineering department head at University of Toronto about pretty much the same topic. He's very much an entrepreneur - started & sold his own business, knows lots of people in the industry, etc.

It's not so much something to "teach" as a culture that needs to be encouraged. Sure, you can offer some business, accounting, economics (entrepreneurship?) courses to engineers, and to some extent U of T does that. But the important thing is, after you graduate chances are you'll do something similar to your friends. All your colleagues are only talking about grad school or working on their resumes and applying for jobs? Chances are that's what you'll do. Been throwing around business ideas with your friends since day 1? You might actually decide to start something.

Don't know if there's an easy solution... good courses and guest speakers help... entrepreneurship/business clubs might help... but if the culture doesn't exist, how do you kickstart it?

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by StStartup on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @07:13AM (#37889)

Every revolution in history has been driven by tech, and the revolutionaries where NOT taught about startups in engineering colleges. So ..you get the point. For revolutionaries, its not required. [and why did you plugin that "wtf" at the end of your rant ? Trying to get that Diggitude? ]

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by aswanson on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @08:10AM (#37896)

Points taken, admitted end in bad taste, newbie mistake.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by zach on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @03:40AM (#37863)

I don't know much about the University of Waterloo (I'm a Mudd ITR), but they do have one guy there who is very big on startups, Larry Smith. Of course, he's in the economics department:

http://www.zachbaker.com/articles/2006/11/30/larry-smith-the...

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by menloparkbum on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @10:01AM (#37927)

If you think school is the answer, every university with an engineering department also has business courses. However, ourses teaching entrepreneurship and "innovation" are usually a joke.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by pg on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @02:07PM (#38018)

If it makes you feel any better, no university actually teaches how to start startups, including business schools.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by ivankirigin on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @04:12PM (#38101)

Aside from "learn by doing", how would you recommend we change universities to make people more likely to start startups?

I'm personally in favor of noting the most capable students around 7th grade, let them finish highschool in 8th grade, and spend high school years learning depth and trying to make things people want. This might be a bit ridiculous.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by pg on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @05:07PM (#38142)

I don't think you have to change universities to make people start startups. Once word spreads among hackers that it works, more will.

What I'd ask is: what could you teach in universities that will help people later in startups? There are some interesting answers to that. One thing engineering schools could do right now is teach more product design, instead of assuming their graduates will all go off to work in big companies as mere implementors.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by aswanson on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @06:04PM (#38168)

One thing that I think universities could change is to make freshman year more than a rehash of high school calc and physics, albeit at a more involved level. This is a recipe for extinguishing imagination.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by menloparkbum on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @06:12PM (#38173)

Most high schools in the USA are so bad that freshman year is mainly remedial. Actually, most high schools in the USA are so bad that the entirety of college is remedial.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by ivankirigin on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @09:06PM (#38233)

Indeed. There should be a a separation either at admissions or with honors classes for kids that can do more. Universities typically aren't nearly as bad as high schools with this.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by arasakik on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @07:03PM (#38195)

Agreed. In terms of Computer Science, I believe that every student should at least be given a mandatory introduction on Human Computer Interaction. I've come across many stellar engineers who are passionate about producing beautiful code, but produce sparse, uninteresting UI's - why should we not also be passionate about producing beautiful, elegant user interfaces?

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by tuukkah on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @03:04AM (#38276)

Interesting that you should pick "sparse, uninteresting" as a qualifier for an example bad UI :-)

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by arasakik on Friday August 10, 2007 @03:22AM (#41200)

Well played - I guess I picked the wrong vocabulary :P

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by ivankirigin on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @05:24PM (#38152)

Even as implementors, most people don't work on large systems while in universities. It isn't so much learning tools to handle these systems but learning why best practices are good to follow.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by aswanson on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @08:10PM (#38216)

Sure they do: http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/whartonfacts/entrepreneurship/#...

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by pg on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @05:13PM (#38492)

I didn't mean they don't have courses claiming to teach it.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by tuukkah on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @03:21AM (#37857)

My university began offering a minor in "technology-based growth venturing" last year, and it was certainly worth taking. The school of business and economics organizes it for the sciences departments, which allows it to be properly framed. Only afterwards could I appreciate how the classes focus on marketing and VC.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by transburgh on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @11:11AM (#37946)

At Ohio State University they have started an entrepreneurship minor and there were a good number of engineering students in my classes. Maybe the engineers that you have witnessed need to take the action to join a business course.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by ryantmulligan on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @12:33PM (#37975)

Can you actually teach entrepreneurship? It seems more like a state of mind that you have to learn over a long time of self discovery.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by aswanny on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @02:13PM (#38022)

True. I think it also takes a sense of rebelliousness, in the sense of, "Why should I have to answer to anyone but myself?" That has been my attitude as long as my memory goes back.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by cperciva on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @03:22AM (#37858)

Big problems are made up of small problems. Who is going to be able to solve the small problems if not the engineers?

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by aswanson on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @03:36AM (#37862)

There are an infinite number of small problems. How are they going to know which are worth solving in their finite lifespan? How will they learn the value of anything if they are not given context?

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by rms on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @05:36AM (#37876)

Engineering Managers

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by s_baar on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @03:04AM (#37852)

Does anyone know of a good college with a healthy balance between the two?

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by rms on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @03:07AM (#37853)

http://www.olin.edu

It's not much easier to get into than MIT, though.

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Re:How can engineering schools not teach startups? by natrius on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @04:34AM (#37865)

At Stanford, E145 is a pretty high quality class on entrepreneurship. Actually working through cases that involve startups trying to make tough decisions about funding and deals was a valuable experience for me, and it's not something that a lot of engineering undergrads get to do. If anyone who goes to Stanford wants more information about the class, shoot me an email.

http://www.stanford.edu/class/e145/

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