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Comment by davenbuster | Hacker News Reader

(full disclosure: I'm a Yale EE grad working as a software engineer for the last 17 years in the valley).

The school has had an ambivalent relationship with applied sciences through its history. They considered closing the engineering departments in the early 90's when I was a student. I am glad to see the school investing in this area, even if it less out of intrinsic interest and more out of market demand and perceiving it as a growth area.

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It is the same as NYU did in 70s. But now NYU merge NYU-Poly as its school of engineering.

I am always amazed at what criteria are used by school administrators to decide which departments to fund. It is very surprised to me as a foreigner born that U.S. doesn't need engineers from Ivy League....

That's because the Ivy League engineers have come out of Germany, China, India, and ostensibly out of Russia and other ex-soviet block members.

Ivy League schools breed leaders not us over paid worker bees. Only engineers complain about working under non-engineers. Lawyers at law firms don't have that problem.

As a senior at Yale right now, and seeing what most of my fellow students are going into next year, the Ivy League is great at pumping out over paid worker bees. See here http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2012/02/13/finance-continues-t... for the numbers going into finance (~20%) and just anecdotally I would guess there are only slightly less going into consulting. Finally, there are a not insignificant number (maybe 10%) doing some sort of engineering.

That's true. Consultants and bankers are also overpaid worker bees.

Edit: but at least they report to other consultants and bankers.

I graduated from Harvard, and like chris_b said with Yale, a not insignificant number of people went into some sort of engineering. It's not the plurality career choice, but it's not like the field is some sort of pariah at Ivy League schools.

Because Ivy -> high social status

engineering -> relatively low social status

Well, no. In the US, lawyers can't work for non-lawyers; that is, they can't work in a position where their legal judgement is subject to review by a non-lawyer. Part of their code of professional responsibility.

How do you square that with General Counsels who report to the CEO/Board?

This is poor analysis. Princeton, Cornell, and Penn have had strong engineering programs for many decades now, and Brown has had a very strong competence in Applied Math.

Your broad brush strokes regarding "Ivies" and lawyers are just mugging for stereotypes.

The Ivy League is basically a historical accident. The US has a whole bunch of other incredibly strong engineering schools, from newer private institutions (Stanford, MIT, CMU) to top public schools (Berkeley, UCLA, Georgia Tech). (These are also perfectly competitive in other subjects from English to pure mathematics.)

Historically, engineering and CS was not a priority for the older Ivies, and it was never an issue for anyone else because there were so many strong alternatives.

This department expansion is certainly good for Yale, but the effect it will have on the top engineering education in the US as a whole is marginal.

NYU's case was somewhat forced by financial problems in the '70s. They had been maintaining two campuses for decades (one in the Bronx, and one in Manhattan), and in 1973 sold the Bronx campus along with some of the programs that were housed there (most notably Engineering), to try to sort out the budget problems. Nowadays NYU is overflowing with cash, so was able to "acquire" the former Brooklyn Poly to get back into engineering.

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