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Olin College — Re-Engineering Engineering
theodp writes "In its College Issue, the NYT Magazine profiles tuition-free Olin College, which is building a different breed of engineer, stressing creativity, teamwork, and entrepreneurship — and, in no small part, courage. But questions remain as to whether the industry is ready for the freethinking products of Olin, and vice versa. Few of the class of 2006 are going on to grad study in engineering or jobs in the field."
Courage always helped me build the best bridges!
I learned those things while I was supposed to be studdying and through struggles at work.
I don't know if that was the best way, but.. Sink or swim? I swim.
I guess they don't teach either counting or spelling at Olin.
Watch the graduates !
They will have trouble with the established firms set in their ways.
Thus they will be unemployed at a high rate.
And because of that they will start their own companies !
And Profit !
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
"stressing creativity, teamwork, and entrepreneurship"
This is opposite of what is expected everywhere that I have worked. Perhaps they should start somewhere besides the engineering college.
2 stories after the "why are no American kids going to grad school?" article, we have an article that explains how Engineering is teamwork, enthusiasm, and feeling good about yourself. Coincidence?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'm not that old, 43, but feel like an old timer in engineering. Son of a EE gone Chief Engineer and trained as a GeolE (1987).
Olin is not inventing a new kind of engineer, they are trying to bring back the engineers of my father's generation. But they can put out the finest people on earth and it won't matter. Bean counters run companies now and they don't like what a good engineer has to say. Horrible things like "we need money to develop this idea", "saving ten cents per item will not save you money in the long run when it breaks and you have to replace it" and the ever-popular "outsourcing production to the cheapest labor you can find is not a good idea because it takes a little bit of skill and QA/QC to build it right".
Now, let's see it at other levels of communication.
I, as a student of a public high school in America, take in more force-fed facts that are expected to be regurgitated, and get fewer and fewer chances to let my creative juices flow. Rather than writing that a person thinks something happened, I think someone could get more of a benefit out of writing about why it happened.
Perhaps that's why all forms of math are just so hard for me to wrap my head around; I know that things work, but I don't see why it's useful.
That aside, in a post-No-Child-Left-Educated world, would there be any creativity left to teach anything like this?
I'm not a teacher, nor am I always a realist, so I might just be thinking too optimistically about this. I guess it'd be best to just wait and see.
- How to change Wall St. to stop looking only at the next quarter's results?
- How to deal with PHB's and bean counters?
- How to persuade the customer to fund your "freethinking" idea instead of the customer's idea?
If not, Olin is producing useless misfits. Oh, I agree that "misfit" is something "good" to be sought after in a certain sense -- creativity is what makes us human. But that's not what the economy needs in the post-Industrial Revolution world.Or they can start their own companies right away and get short term success, maybe even long term success. Engineers without some amount of business sense might be long term failures too, or even short term failures. It's all a gamble in many ways.
Its perfectly within tolerances based on the specifications.
rewriting history since 2109
...free advertising. Or was paying for buzzwords part of this "new way of thinking"?
Oooh! Oooh! An exciting new paradigm. Is the world really ready for this exciting new paradigm yet. I bet it isn't!
Well, best of luck to them. My exciting new paradigm of sleeping in until midday every day hasn't caught on in the stoic and unchanging business world. They just haven't caught on to my forward and freethinking ways. But just you wait... my Slashdot story is coming soon!
Interesting :-).
Y-combinator seems to be generating 40 quickie get-big-or-die-trying companies a year. What I found interesting is that in a few years 'Alumnus of Y-combinator' is going to have a very good cachet associated with it - just as an MS from a good college does. There're going to be a bunch of successes and even those who don't succeed will have the associated aura. The guys who put themselves through Y-combinator are a self-selected bunch of motivated people, who might even have an above average chance of succeeding in life.
Olin students might have similar self-selected characteristics. And in a few years, the results of that experiment - with widespread Olin alumni support - are going to be worth watching.
Note, I'm in no way related to either. Just speculating on a correlation that I see.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
it's the swamp
Engineering based firms that hire Computer Science and Computer Engineering undergraduates are struggling to meet their recruitment goals today. Although coming up with new ways to shape the skills and experiences of engineering undergraduates is noble and necessary. It hardly helps with the overall lack of new students majoring in those subjects at university in the first place. This program is an interesting experiment at an elite school. But it hardly has any impact on the lack of students choosing this field.
The other problem I have with it is that the ideas espoused are not terribly new. At the University of Nebraska's School of Engineering students can enter the JD Edwards Honors program with an emphasis in Business.
http://jdedwards.unl.edu/
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.
Sean
And Profit !
Perhaps this is the missing intermediate step in the underwear gnomes' formula?
It's just like programming. Every company is turbo-stupid in only taking interns and people with 5+ years of experience for any real programming job. So the fresh grads write their own software and a big company buys and and then they get hired.
I like engineering being like that too cuz then you get more inventions. It takes a company forever to invent something new with all the budgeting and paperwork and meetings and higher ups and blah blah blah. If engineers can't get hired, they just invent something and sell it and they do it waaaaaaaaay faster.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Few of the class of 2006 are going on to grad study in engineering or jobs in the field.
This is no surprise since engineering job opportunities for US citizens have been dwindling in 21st century.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
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.
I am a 62-year old engineer that was trained at a school now known as Kettering University. We were trained to think and act responsibly and engage the big picture. Engineers I hire today are not. With luck, 1 in 10 graduates will be worth something after 6-9 years of mentoring. Engineering schools and universities are failing in education but it is the bigger problem of a stupid culture that does not value skills, common sense, tech ability.
Several of the Olin faculty members are fantastic teachers who were denied tenure at MIT because (in my opinion) their devotion to teaching cut into their research, which is all that counts toward MIT tenure. (This includes my advisor, Lynn Stein.) I'd be proud to teach at Olin or to send my children (if I had any) there.
One of the key ways that money is made is by disrupting the status quo. Take something that is good, and make it much better. Take something that is thought of as important, and replace it completely. Think of every great product that you know - the kind of products that changed everything how people live and work. The hammer, the wheel, the model-T, the plow, the longbow, the musket, the steam engine, the computer, automated mfg, the internet. Hell, even simple things, like the ipod. These creations have improved the possibilities of the human experience (except, maybe, the ipod ;). This is what Olin college is attempting to inspire.
Industry is floundering because it has stopped giving engineers and creative types the responsibility of actual creation. If we, as a society, wish to bring engineering and manufacturing back to our side of the world, we need colleges and programs like the ones that Olin is taking on. We need engineers who will develop & create beyond our expectations. This is important to the future success of America.
- DaftShadow
Sounds like the bureaucrats want a mini-me beureaucrat with some sort of "engineering" "skills", but I thought that hey got that with industrial and systems "engineers", but maybe I was wrong...
And then what?
The Head of Admissions, after asking if I was gay, (I'm not.) told my mother, "White boys with perfect SATs are a-dime-a-dozen." And he continued to ignore me in favor of 'the girl' (who wanted to do chemical engineering, which they don't offer,) and my sister, who was a sophomore psychology major.
If I were gay or female, there is about a 90% chance that I would have gotten in to Olin.
Since outward diversity is one of their highest priorities though, I'm glad I'm not there.
I went to my state school for engineering, and then stayed for my masters. It offered plenty of opportunities for creativity, and I added a business minor to accent the education. They can try all they want, but you can breed entrepreneurs. Your education is what you make of it. If it's an accredited engineering school, its still teaching all the same classes I took, so all they're doing is trying to force an entrepreneurial spirit on the kids. Good luck with that...I'll take my top 15 ranked engineering school at an in-state tuition. I'll make my own success, I don't need some professor trying to teach me how to be creative.
You say
It hardly helps with the overall lack of new students majoring in those subjects at university in the first placeyou also say
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 jobTo me it follows that what you want is cheap, submissive employees that just do what some "manager" told them
Really, why should somebody do engineering ?, do managment instead. You will know nothing about what you are managing (Dilber Principle) but at least you will be rewarded with a manager position and the associated money
I just graduated in December and ran around applying at places for a while. I got some pretty decent job offers (73k + full medical, dental, vision, 18 days paid vacation + 7 paid holidays... etc), but in the end I ended up just working for myself. Bad idea? Probably. I have no business experience, just software engineering. Paying off in the short term? Not as much as one of those jobs would have. Sure, some of my clients are billing out at $75/hour, some at $65, some at $45, some at $30, but it's unpredictable who will need how much help when. However, for the first time in a long time I'm happy.
So I may be a long term failure or a long term success, who knows and who cares, but I have to say the freedom rocks. Can an engineer without much business sense make it with his own business? I guess I'll find out, but I like the fact that I'm at least trying. I can tuck my tail between my legs later if I have to. I get a strange feeling I won't have to.
The next step would be implementation and applying them to real world practical problems. This is where an engineer differs from a hobbyist.
Though I must say, the pay of an engineer isn't nearly as good as what peers get in finance or consulting (then again I am in the NY area, and those two fields seem to eat up all the smart technically inclined people).
Stupid NYT registration
Re-engineering Engineering
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
WHEN NONENGINEERS THINK ABOUT ENGINEERING, its usually because something has gone wrong: collapsing levees in New Orleans, the loss of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003. In the follow-up investigations, it comes out that some of the engineers involved knew something was wrong. But too few spoke up or pushed back and those who did were ignored. This professional deficiency is something the new, tuition-free Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering wants to fix. At its tiny campus in Needham, Mass., outside Boston, Olin is trying to design a new kind of engineer. Most engineering schools stress subjects like differential calculus and physics, and their graduates tend to end up narrowly focused and likely to fit the stereotype of a socially awkward clock-puncher. Richard K. Miller, the president of the school, likes to share a professional joke: How can you tell an extroverted engineer? Hes the one who looks at your shoes when he talks to you. Olin came into being, Miller told me last spring in his office on campus, to make engineers comfortable as citizens and not just calculating machines. Olin is stressing creativity, teamwork and entrepreneurship and, in no small part, courage. I dont see how you can make a positive difference in the world, he emphasized, if youre not motivated to take a tough stand and do the right thing.
Olin College started with what would amount to institutional suicide. Named for its founder, a munitions manufacturer who died in 1951, the F. W. Olin Foundation had spent nearly six decades giving money to dozens of campuses for buildings, much of it for teaching engineering and science. In 1993, however, the board of the foundation floated the idea of doing something that well-financed organizations rarely do: go out of business. Lawrence W. Milas, the president of the foundation, said he had grown frustrated with a process that helped schools but didnt change engineering education, which he says he thought was in a rut. He wondered whether it might be a good idea to fold the foundation and devote its assets to the creation of a new college.
A conversation with an executive of the National Science Foundation, Joseph Bordogna, persuaded Milas that his idea was sound. As a major, engineering was slipping in popularity. And the schools and their graduates were suffering from many of the ills of higher education generally. More and more, the schools were demanding specialized courses of study instead of an interdisciplinary approach. Bordogna explained how the National Science Foundation had been lending support to schools that were trying to adopt reforms and foster an undergraduate experience that focused on learning through inquiry and discovery. Yet Milas understood that these programs were competing with a strong institutional inertia. Engineering schools had structured themselves, largely for the convenience of faculty, around a comfortable way of teaching but not the best methods of learning. There was too much note-taking in the classroom and not enough hands-on learning. Institutions stressed research over undergraduate teaching, because thats where the recognition and grant money come from.
The Bordogna meeting got Milas thinking. Thats when the light went on, Milas recalled. We can start with a blank slate. He went back to the Olin Foundation and started to push. He recalled that the other members of his small board had reservations, but Milas was certain. I was a little bit of a terrier on this, he said. We went for it. Eventually, the F. W. Olin Foundation agreed to give more than $400 million to create a whole new school.
Milas began looking for someone to lead the school, and the president of Harvey Mudd College, in California, suggested that he take a look at Miller, at the time the dean of the college of engineering at the University of Iowa. To Miller, it was a unexpected call, and an unwelcome one. He had just turned down another job offer, and my family was cheering. He
Humorous translation:
Step 1:Fail
Step 2:Start own company
Step 3:???
Step 4:Profit
While I am not certain from this story what exactly Olin is doing, the general concept is not new. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology's "ABET 2000" standard was intentionally designed to allow colleges to come up with programs similar to this. Instead of mandating you will must take "Calculus I, II, & III" like older ABET standards, much more finer requirements are required, which no mandate on which course provides the lecture. For example: I intended an ABET 2000 certified engineering program, and never had a dedicated course in statistics.
One example of another school using similar techniques is Rowan University's College of Engineering, which graduated their first engineering class in 2000. They base most of their Engineering Curriculum around a course called the "Engineering Clinic", where students work in small teams to generate real-world products and results. At the Junior & Senior levels, Rowan's clinic projects are usually sponsored by various companies, as well as local government agencies. The projects range from the mundane (build a flashlight) to the insane (conduct surveys and analyze the health of local major suspension bridges).
Unfortunately, it looks like Rowan's Engineering pages have been revamped by the central corporate webmasters, so there is no dedicated page for the clinic any more. But if you ever go there, Rowan's Engineering building (Rowan Hall) actually only has 6 dedicated classrooms - the rest of the 3 usable stories are all laboratory space.
(Note I am tad biased because I graduated from Rowan University's Engineering program. But if someone wants more information on it, feel free to reply with a message.)
A couple of times a year, I pull up the following and read it, trying to realign my thinking process. I don't know who originally wrote it; I've had it for years. I apologize for the long post, but it's worth it. ++++++++++++++++++++ Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.I read the examination question: "SHOW HOW IT IS POSSIBLE TO DETERMINE THE HEIGHT OF A TALL BUILDING WITH THE AID OF A BAROMETER." The student had answered, "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it,lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building." The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on. In the next minute, he dashed off his answer which read: "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch.Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^^2, calculate the height of the building." At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded,and gave the student almost full credit. While leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem,so I asked him what they were. "Well," said the student, "there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building,and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building." "Fine," I said, "and others?" "Yes," said the student, "there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units." "A very direct method." "Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building,in principle, can be calculated." "On this same tact, you could take the barometer to the top of the building,attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession". "Finally," he concluded, "there are many other ways of solving the problem.Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer." At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think. The student was Neils Bohr.
And they are by far some of the most intelligent hands-on people I have ever met. Although I am in no way qualified to comment on their credentials and experience - I am a Junior at Babson College - most of the successful v.c./angel pitches that are done by groups of Babson students at any one of our yearly events events include students from Olin as part of the founding team.
Like I said, I am not qualified on their engineering talent. I do know that they only accept students who can demonstrate a committed dedication to engineering - from what I have heard, if you haven't built anything in your spare time you don't have a chance in hell of getting in. I also know that you can generally find a couple of Olin students at any one time testing one thing or another down by the lower athletic fields. To be honest, I was more under the impression that Olin's curriculum was more pragmatic than the Slashdot summery made out. Although Olin is dedicated to entrepreneurship, (Olin was started by a Babson alum with funds that originated with another Babson alum, on Babson's campus. Given that Babson is largely focused on entrepreneurship, this is pretty much a given.) their students all appear, at least, to have a solid grasp of mathematics, the sciences, and so on. They also haven't had any issues finding their graduates jobs over the past year. What all of this means - I don't know, I'm a Business major.
"Or they can start their own companies right away and get short term success, maybe even long term success."
Not as engineers though right? I mean, engineers still need to work in the industry under a PE before they can sit for their PE license. (broad concept...) Well, I guess they could hire PEs and work under them while still being their boss in some way...
all the best,
drew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biOFnAlXrV8
UFO engineering there...
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
Yep, legal in all states to have a PE as one of the managing partners of the company and have non-PEs as the other managers. Not sure about just hiring PEs, but I'm sure that there are some who don't want to be arsed to deal with the business side of things, and would be perfectly happy as chief of engineering or something.
Besides, not all design work requires a PE. You just can't represent yourself as an engineer, work in fields that are legally controlled like building or highway design, or probably testify as an expert witness in court. This still leaves a lot of opportunity open.
-b.
Can't speak for the OP, but a kid fresh out of college doesn't have the experience to merit a salary far in advance of $50k. They can't be trusted to work without supervision until they've demonstrated that they're able to translate school-like tasks into real-world tasks. It's not about what some "manager" tells them, its about the experience to understand their part in a larger project and the confirmation that the actually do know some engineering.
I see many people come out of their college experience confident in their own skills because they've been able to answer all the homework problems, figure out how some historical designs work, and been able to at least mostly make a couple of lab/design projects work. Those are all promising signs, but not one of them means that the kid will be able to work out a novel design. A business takes a risk every time it asks an engineer for a design, and it minimizes that risk by picking a proven engineer. There's no proof in a BSE.
"This still leaves a lot of opportunity open."
Sure. I wasn't hinting otherwise.
I graduated in 81 with a BS in ocean engineering. I sat for and obtained my Florida State Engineer Intern Certificate. (I seem to remember us calling it the EIT.)
I never did a lick of work in the field after that and ended up teaching myself what I needed to know to get by in the area of computers.
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
Teamwork comes naturally and doen't have to be taught. On the job, your manager gives you part of a project to do and tells you who to talk with to interface with the rest of the project. That talking is where teamwork comes in; you get a glimpse of other portions of the project, and if you can see deficiencies in other places you discuss them (and vice-versa for others looking at your portion). No particular courage needed.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Olin looks to be a 2 field program, mechanical and computer/electrical. Someone mentioned Rowan, it I think was 3. Rowan didn't mention Materials Science and Engineering (MS&E) as a program, and Olin seems to only pay it lip service.
If there is only 1 material available, there is no problem with having a Mech E, Civ E (or EE) choose that one material. How a material interacts with the environment is dominated by chemistry, and none of those disciplines have much chemistry. If we look at where MS&E is going, it will eventually get to the point where we are specifying what atoms go where. In essence, we are going to design by condensed matter physics, statistical mechanics, molecular dynamics, quantum chemistry, etc. MS&E will be needed for that. Even today, there is so much choice out there, that it is a full time job just to "know" materials. It's not just pick and choose out of some sales brochure.
Part of the reason why the materials choices available today aren't even larger than they are, is that designers involved in mechanical properties don't know how to design without assuming a stiffness tensor (Young's modulus). If you start out assuming 200 GPa, it isn't too surprising that when it comes to choose a material, it is probably some kind of steel. And all alternatives are too expensive, because you have to go back and redo the entire design with some different (but still assumed) stiffness tensor.
In large part, the "plain" steels are garbage. If you don't sign in to some long term, corrosion monitoring program for your plain steel design, it may degrade to unusefulness before things that we throw into the garbage have decomposed. We might as well be building stuff out of garbage, it lasts longer.
And for all the people who build things by welding, it can be a bit worse. Now instead of having a single material which has dubious corrosion properties, we are producing materials made of (usually) 3 different materials in intimate electrical contact (fusion zone, HAZ and parent material). Just add electrolyte and we have corrosion to go.
Oh, by the way, are the corrosion products toxic to anything in the environment? What about any of the ingredient materials that go into producing the design materials?
Never mind. Just get it out the door at the lowest upfront cost. Let the customer worry about something that won't last as long as the garbage we are throwing out today. And let the landfills worry about the stuff we are throwing away to get the product out the door.
A project-focused curriculum (I notice that project orientation was the first thing the NYT noted about Olin), including multi-term projects: a Major Qualifying Project in concentrating on your major and an Interactive Qualifying Project applying technology to human need.
A comprehensive examination in your major in lieu of narrowly-defined course requirements; a typical comp involved tackling a problem in your major area for a couple of days, submitting a solution, and facing a panel to defend your solution (and general competence in your major) orally.
A "humanities sufficiency" requirement that encouraged depth over a scattering of minimal course requirements.
A non-traditional grading system (Pass w/ Distinction, Pass, No Record) that encouraged risk-taking (and, unfortunately, over-subscribing to courses ;-) ).
As a transfer student, I was one of the last people who could choose to graduate under the traditional system, which I did because it took best advantage of my transferred credit. I did enjoy some of the benefits, including the ability to do an MQP-scale project for credit.
There were some initial problems and the Plan has been tweaked -- notably, some faculty observed that IQP's often took on a shallow variation on "an electronic crutch" -- but I found it a dynamic environment to learn in.
I've also had a chance to observe Olin from a distance (my daughter was recently an undergrad at Babson); only time will tell if the program is successful, but I welcome a new generation of mold-breakers who will think different (and differently).
I am coming up to 30 years in the engineering field. In those years, I have rarely worked on subjects I studid in school. On the other hand I find I have used a great deal of the knowlege I acquired in school to work on things my professors had never even thought of.
That said, an engineering education is required to do two things: 1) provide the student with a sufficiently broad base of knowlege so they can solve problems, and: 2)convert the student's skull full of mush into a brain that can logically analyze problems, identify paterns with incomplete data sets and apply the base of scientific knowlege to develop solutions that meet cost, performance and reliability requirements in the simplist way.
Sadly few students posess the potential to meet the second, and no ammount of training or education will change that.
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 design user interfaces for a free network management application,
I agree, the present legacy S&D biz-model promotes trickle-down economics for intransigent Luddite-management that avoids innovation, risk ....
...) used to structure a more enfranchising techno-equal global economic architecture that will gradually displace by (success or failure) meritocracy the present oligarchical feudal-serf corporate-economics/governance.
I think, this could be another element (like OSS, Open standards
I can always hope.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The idea for Olin College originated with the president of the F.W. Olin Foundation in the mid-90's, Lawrence W. Milas, who received his B.A. in Management from Babson College in 1958. Although Franklin W. Olin wasn't a Babson graduate, several members of the Olin family were (the Olin family, along with F.W. Olin foundation, has historically been one of Babson's largest donors).
There was another article in NYT magazine that had some good obserations in it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/magazine/30wwln-essay-perlstein-t.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all
The parts that caught my eye as being especially descriptive, and troubling, about colleges today are
-- the smothering, infantile nature of the place
-- the huge expense
-- the "Organization Kids"
-- the non-Organization Kids who are bored, waiting to get out
I'd like to make the point that most of the people who talk a lot about education and educational systems and organizations, you know the kind of elementary teachers who actually get excited about those awful pep-rally motivational speaker shit fest in-teacher-day things, the kind of people who join "Beacon St. 30" groups or "re-engineering committees", are actually the WORST people to be in charge of education.
That's a kind of general point, because in other fields, the people who are most interested in managerial and organizational aspects also tend to be the worst people for those jobs. But it is especially bad in education, at all levels.
Much of what used to be the good part of college life is now a supervised Disney-fied version of it. MIT has made the hacks tradition part of it's corporate culture, and when the CMU guys stole the CalTech cannon they hired a professional moving company to move it for $15,000 ! What happened to loading it in the back of some frat boys' dad's horse trailer and driving across the country drinking, fighting at truck stops and picking up hitchhikers ? And when those CalTech guys "stole it back" they hired the same moving company to bring it back. Any "senior skip day" or other bit of independence is quickly integrated as a bit of faux rebellion into the administration, and put on the official calendar. "We had to re-schedule taking over the dorm for a big pot party, because the Student Affairs office said there was a conflict." Modern student life as all the "independence" of a company bowling league.
Tuition has been rising faster than inflation for a long time. (Of course, most things seem to rising faster than inflation, which might cause the sceptical to question the government's inflation figures.) The costs of a university are not rising particularly fast -- the costs are mostly salaries, one of the only catagories supposedly rising slower than inflation -- and aside from the occasional super-star researcher and the overpaid administration, the janitors and groundsmen aren't getting rich, and these institutions are expert at extracting free or below-market labor from grad students and untenured professors. The universities are exempt from most taxes, have mostly acquired their land long ago and don't pay property tax on it, so construction and energy costs must be a part of the remaining real costs.
My general impression, from the sum of all these observations, is that going to college is probably not a good deal for most of the people who do it. Of course, I agree that the nation needs educated people, and in particular people educated in "traditional" humanities, languages, and the science and technical fields. I don't know any good alternatives to the current crop of institutions, but just because we don't know of good alternatives yet, is no reason to keep dumping resources down the hole we know doesn't work.
From my point of view, as a post-college technically educated person, the most hopeful strategy (even if it seems weak) seems to be a temporary return to a more apprentice type, on-the-job education until the higher education bubble burns out. I think I should focus on employing people who didn't go to college but have some technical aptititude -- in my area, that consists mainly of young sys admins who never went to college or were kicked out after one year. Their knowledge of the use of computers is good, thei
I know the best and brightest are often encouraged to do stuff like Peace Corps after graduating. I wonder how many Olin Engineers are building bridges in developing countries and getting some hands on experience that way?
And graduating debt free means they aren't automatically enslaved 6 months after graduation... they can wait for marriage and a mortgage for that.
Well, as a recent graduate of, I think I can safely call shenanigans on this post. It's definitely harder to get your foot in the door, but my classmates and I have all found we're more than well prepared enough when it comes to interviewing. Getting past the first hurdle of "I've never heard of this school" is much more difficult than actually getting a job. As far as "established" companies, I have friends working for Google, Raytheon, IDEO, Northop Grumman, Johnson&Johnson, iRobot, HP, and DEKA to name a few. There are also the ones in grad school at Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell, Columbia, Harvard and Oxford (again, to name a few).
Overall, I think we're doing ok for ourselves.
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No, I think the point he was making was that to be an engineer you need to go through an apprenticeship, not jump straight into management type roles.
So he rightly said that when recruiting for engineering positions, he didn't tend to look at these schools.
By the way, when I started work as an engineer, it was as a Student Apprentice, and I did a lot of workshop, and assembly line, work, as part of it. I have the knuckles to prove it.
WTF are you smoking. Most humanities courses teach route repetition of the teachers views (they aren't called 'circle jerks' for nothing).
In Engineering courses you often create things that work (even if they are contrived). You learn the about the creative process as it applies to Engineers (trade offs, costs, scheduling etc etc).
Tell me again how learning to repeat the teachers opinions on literature, history etc etc are better at teaching creativity?
While we're at it explain how liberal arts education (typically completely devoid of non-remedial science or math) is well rounded while an Engineering education is not (though I took fully 30 units of liberal arts coursework, English, History, Econ).
I agree with the grandparent poster. Engineering is hard. There aren't enough hours in the school year. If you add more fluff courses something has to give.
Education should be lifelong. Most of the things you discuss are easily picked up by any interested Engineering program graduate.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
I toured there while looking for a place to do my undergrad. They only teach Mech-Eng, CE and EE. I'm a MatE by nature. I knew that at the time and didn't apply. Also their admission possess doesn't conclude until mid-May. That is a pain with other admissions schedules. I imagine it might be a good choice for a business major though.
"Somebody who graduated from M.I.T. is probably a better formal engineer. They can probably recite better than I could. But I have other experience."
Yeah, and when your bridge is collapsing, 'other experience' isn't going to help hold it up.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."