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I would suggest looking into Olin College of Engineering. It's a small, project-oriented engineering school in Massachusetts. They pay the tuition of each student so the cost only runs around $17.000 a year instead of $50,000 a year.
School Website: http://olin.edu/
Article in IEEE Spectrum on Olin: http://spectrum.ieee.org/may06/3432

Actually, May 1st is the deadline for accepting or denying admission to Olin. I think that it is a national deadline. Accepted students find out sometime in late March or Early April that they are accepted. These deadlines and dates are not so different from other schools. Though the application deadline is early this year (December 1st) and that is to give admissions more time and is probably related to our unusual admissions process. see for dates http://olin.edu/admission/applying_to_olin.asp and for comparison dates http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/deadlines/index.shtml

Olin was started by a Babson alum with funds that originated with another Babson alum, on Babson's campus.

Actually, the funds came from the F. W. Olin Foundation, originally from funds left by Franklin W. Olin after his death. He got the money by starting the Olin Corporation which among other things owned Remington rifles and did a lot of chemical engineering. Olin himself was a Cornell graduate.

I'm sorry, I don't quite agree with you. Which company do you work for? How many have you hired that you can make such a broad conclusion?

Disclaimer: I'm pretty familiar with the J.D. Edwards Honors Program (JDE) since my company started working with their students in Design Studio last year. We're doing another two projects this year. My particular office is in Fargo, ND, but we're headquartered in Redmond, WA, and I like to think we have high standards for college hires (anyone ever heard of the manhole question?). Last year we hired 4, and I think we're hoping for another "good crop" this year.

It [Olin's approach] hardly helps with the overall lack of new students majoring in those subjects at university in the first place.

Why do you say that? JDE's initial classes suffered from the same problem that all cs/engineering fields suffer from: lack of women. However, in the past 3 years, since the program started making a name for itself in the region, the incoming classes have shifted from 15% women to 40%. If you look at Olin's student profiles, you'll see their classes ranged 40-50% women. I think that's pretty amazing, and it's evidence that programs like these can attract new students.

Anytime a program/college/university realizes that the real-world is interdisciplinary, I think it's a win for students and industry. I happen to hope the academics merge computer science/engineering and business because that's valuable to me, but that's not the only potent combination.

This program is an interesting experiment at an elite school.

Really? According to Olin's wiki article, it is a standalone school only affiliated with area schools to share services (like safety and athletics). If you're referring to JDE, at 10 years old it's neither an experiment nor at an elite school (Nebraska is a good school, but still is no Harvard).

The other problem I have with it is that the ideas espoused are not terribly new.

Again, reading Olin's wiki article and and JDE's wiki article, it seems Olin was founded in 1997 and JDE was founded in 1998. So, Olin's "technically" first, but the start dates are so close together and in different parts of country that I would call this a tie. It makes me wonder, though, how many other programs are out there like this?

I tend to not hire CompSci or CompE students from this program because as entry level hires they have incredibly unrealistic expectations about their first job. They all want to transition to management right away before cutting their teeth on engineering design. So we tend to skip them over when we get resumes.

This doesn't make any sense. Really. Let's start with how many you've hired... it's my understanding that we've hired the most from the program (12-15 I believe), and that's not a problem we see.

Second, what you're saying is that these students you hire from JDE are dissatisfied with you. That's more your problem than it is theirs. If, as you say, these kids have such unreasonable expectations, the as a good recruiter you should have picked up on that with their questions about future opportunities at your company. You know, a student would ask "how long until I become a manager?" -- yes, I have heard such questions -- and that should be a red flag. You should have picked up on the issue during the hiring process and either reset expectations there or passed.

Third, what kind of work do they do as engineers? Wanting to go to management tells me nothing of their performance. From what I can guess, they're probably rocking it hard at your company but you're failing to reward them. So they leave. This is normal human behavior that happens e

Scholarship Policy: Every admitted student receives a four-year, full tuition scholarship valued at approximately $130,000

Cheers,

RM

Someone please show me where on their web site it states that the education is tuition-free. All I can find is this: Cost and Financial Aid

You have to get the Olin Scholarship, which has the equivalent amount of the tuition. But it certainly does not say anyone admitted will be qualified. You certainly will have to go through the competitive qualification process, just like any other colleges?

If it's really tuition-free, I'll apply for a graduate engineering degree in a heart beat.

Frank W. Olin College of Engineering ( http://www.olin.edu/ ) near Boston just graducated their first class last spring. They are acredited now. The big thing they have done is to re-engineer the process of training engineers. They focus on the core engineering diciplines, mechanical, electrical, and civil, and only work with undergraduates.

For the most part, they start doing 'hands on' engineeering, and support it with theory as it makes sense. They also put in a focus on being well rounded, with some reasonable liberal arts requirements and business.

From what I see, they are looking at putting out engineering entrepenurs that can work in any kind of environment.

Even when I was in college 30+ years ago now, the emphasis was more on teaching people how to think and learn on their own as technology changes. rather than just how to get it done with todays technology.

From what I have seen, focusing on 'certifications' and 'classes' for industrial training, only teaches people how to work now and take home a paycheck. Not how to learn.

IMHO, College should prime the pump to give you a supply of knowlege for life, not just give you a tub of knowlege to use that will drain, then you must be religated to a materially empty life, rather than refilling your understanding and knowlege continuously for life.

It goes back to the old maxum of 'Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.'

I have run into many people that still percieve much education as 'wasteful' because it doesn't focus on the latest 'technology' but teaches a method of thinking. I still believe they are missing the boat.

Olin College of Engineering was built to address this issue. Other schools like WPI have followed suit. The word is out there, especially to the ASEE, and it's being implemented. However, even as a graduate of Olin, I've gotten crap from people at more traditional engineering schools telling me I'll never be worth anything because I haven't been "trained" enough. There's some social change that needs to happen, not just at the university level, before this will really take off.

Do what I did: Take AP CS on your own. Then be sure to apply to Olin College. It's lots of fun, admission comes with a full-tuition scholarship for everyone, and we take innovative, world-class technology classes every day. Oh, and since there are only about 300 students, we don't really have X-inch plasma screens at our football stadium. Neither do we have a football stadium.

Shameless pitches aside, I'm afraid many American high schools like yours and mine simply won't offer worthwhile technology courses until it's too late - not just for you and me, but for lots of young /.ers. I remember feeling exactly as you did about sports vs. academics in HS, and worrying about the same thing coming into college. As so many previous posters have pointed out, although there's not much you or I can do in the short term about that sort of imbalance, it's not truly as harmful to the academic side of most schools as it may seem. Schools generally budget the athletic department separately, and those departments (especially in colleges) often pay for themselves with ticket sales and athletics-specific fundraising. Do what you can toward learning technology / computer science in HS (i.e. independent study, college courses, joint enrollment, etc.), but don't feel bad if you don't get away with much technology coursework under your belt; at the very least you'll be in good company when you get to college and start learning what you really want to learn. It may not be the best way to run a national educational institution, but (as always) the really bright folks don't depend on the educational experience as much as the sort of middle bracket on which America is losing so much ground to the rest of the world.

Good luck, and keep Olin in mind when college app time rolls around =).

Cory Doctorow came to Olin College a couple of weeks ago. I wrote up a short summary of his talk. The take-home message I personally got from his talk was that the biggest danger comes when DRM creeps into hardware, preventing kids from being able to tinker with technology and learn about it when their minds are most open. Here is the abstract of his talk which was entitled "0wned -- how Hollywood plans on making the future subservient on the past" .

"...please read this overview."

TRANSLATION:

...please support and increase Roland Piquepaille spam and advertising clickthrough rates.

If you really want more details and pictures about the Mars Underground Mole then you can

• read this SpaceDaily four-part article on Mars Drillers
• read the Mars Underground Mole PDF with diagrams, photos and tables
• look at a whole range of Mars-related projects from the 2003 Sixth International Conference on Mars
• read a Deutsche Welle interview with German Aerospace Center Chairman Sigmar Wittig - DLR developed the Mars Express mole that inspired the MUM project
• read a National Space Society two-part interview with Dr. Brian Glass, MUM co-investigator
• read about a MUM inspired student project or
• watch a NASA Mars Underground Mole Quicktime movie animation.

It's much better than supporting craven self-interested people who are just after advertising like Roland Piquepaille, blog spammer.

When I read where the author was from I thought it sounded familiar. Olin College of Engineering is non-accredited.

Of course, forget about those 'honorary' degrees, or non-accredited but soon-to-be universities such as the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.

This story runs into a pet peeve of mine. When people are caught with fake degrees, their employers usually say "Oh, it's okay, we didn't hire him for his education anyway. Just his experience and background." My reply is, did you hire him for his integrity and honesty? Cause you sure didn't get what you paid for. And it's not the foreigners doing it. It's American citizens.

Conesus

I got to Olin College of Engineering, and our dorms are pretty well outfitted. There are two major wall panels in the room (it's a double). Each one has 2 fiber ports, 4 Cat6 ports, 1 coax cable TV and 4 power outlets. Even so, I have a power strip hoooked up.

I think people are going to fill whatever capacity they're given...

Olin College does something similar to that - they hire professors on 5-year contracts, after five years, they would be reviewed, and some administrative board of some sort decides if they want to offer them an extension.

This of course is only what I understand of that situation. As I am not a student, nor a faculty member at that school. Although I did take a class this past fall on their campus.

Didnt slashdot run a story on franklin w olin college that also give full tuition to all students admitted? I think its private but I could be wrong.

In computer science and engineering, Olin has some of the best professors that didn't fit at MIT because they cared too much about teaching and students, namely Lynn Stein and Gill Pratt. When at MIT, I worked with Lynn and heard many good things about Gill.

In computer science and engineering, Olin has some of the best professors that didn't fit at MIT because they cared too much about teaching and students, namely Lynn Stein and Gill Pratt. When at MIT, I worked with Lynn and heard many good things about Gill.

Heh. I'm one of those people.

What actually happened:
30 students were at Olin this year. In a hotel for a bit, then in modular housing (nice modular housing, but I won't miss it). Well, except for the month we went to France to find out what we did and did not like about international experiences, when we stayed in ENSAM's dorms and worked with Georgia Tech Lorraine.

We worked with the faculty, staff, and administration to design the curriculum (which consisted of a lot of meetings and testing various pedagogies out) as well as student life programs (honor code, student government, clubs, etc). We worked in six four to five week modules. The first, third, fourth, and sixth modules were curriculum development, the second was community service development, and the fifth was the international experience. We also had some side projects, such as competing against upperclassmen & grad students in the NASA MarsPort competition and earning an outstanding in the ICM. Great group of people to work & live with, we got a lot done.

At the end of the week we become freshmen.

You can bring the cattle to water, but you can't teach them to drink.

It's a great idea, but without stellar teachers and researchers the students won't know what to learn.

The last time I checked out the faculty at Olin, they were in dire need of a bunch of professors. Believe it or not, there's only one chemistry professor on staff! What about the students interested in chemical engineering??

For anyone interested in a very basic overview of the parts (possibly below the level of slashdot geeks...), Olin College created a tutorial for new teams at http://first.robotics.olin.edu. Right now, the college's connection seems to be overwhelemed; a mirror is at http://www.logicalrealism.org/first/. It also includes some of the systems discussed in the kickoff, namely the light-sensor tracker and a thrower.