How can engineering schools not teach startups? | Hacker News Reader

How can engineering schools not teach startups?

10 pointsaswanson30 comments

I mean, every revolution in history has been driven by tech. So why do the business guys get taught entreprenership, capital markets, etc, while the guys with a chance to innovate are taught to crank turn and think in terms of bounded small problems. WTF?

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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.

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

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

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?

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? ]

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

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...

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

Engineering Managers

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

http://www.olin.edu

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

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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