You waste too much time with exams.
There should be an opportunity to get credits for entrepeneurial work at university.
Edit: I am engineering alumnus of a so called elite university in germany and struggled much with exams because I just wanted to do more practical work which one can sell.
The bigger question is whether you should be paying 3-4 figures per credit just to be recognized by the university for doing that independent study.
Paying per credit wasn't a problem, as tuition was fixed for full-time students.
This is absolutely false. Great colleges are extremely hard, and in top programs kids are always fighting for life to not get kicked out.
To me, CMU taught invaluable lessons in hard work, getting kicked in the teeth over and over, surviving mostly on coffee and alcohol, and persisting till success comes along. All these lessons help while starting a startup.
A great college program will make graduate's problems feel small in comparison to what they put him through.
Besides, starting a company is not the only entrepreneurial work one can do. Is Sundar Pichai less or more entrepreneurial than Zuckerberg? There are far more ways to inhibit courage than starting a company.
This is a lie when it comes to non-technical degrees at elite colleges like Harvard. Most people get A's. It's a joke.
Edit: source: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/3/grade-inflation-...
Grade inflation does happen in some courses. But it's not easy and is far from a joke.
In the article you mentioned, the average is A-. Which means half of the smartest people recruited off from high school struggled to make it to 90 average, even after worrisome inflation. At worst, that's a 5-7% grade inflation.
(What gets people kicked out is a major depressive episode that results in DNFing all their classes for a while, not handing in mediocre homework consistently.)
When talking about people just trying to get by, you're naturally ruling out people who can start a company. The argument here is refuting the assertion that college is useless for a wannabe entrepreneur. I say it's not, for the person who wants to use it. All great CEOs did use college effectively. Some started companies there, some found talent there, some learned lessons, some learned hard work, some got inspired, and some learned skills.
But when you are studying it is the best time to start a company. It would be better if colleges would honor this instead of just ignoring.
But I agree, it would be nice to have a guided entrepreneur-track independent study style option. Or at least a more startup-friendly environment and outlook in departments.
What?
Most people would argue that having knowledge of the field, experience and contacts; the sort of thing you get after working in a field for a while, is going to help more than the slightly increased physical stamina you have as a very young person.
Even if you do think that having a child will slow you down, being older doesn't automatically mean you will become a parent... the technology in that field is pretty good at this point.
Starting a business before 20-21 is not really ideal. Yes, some people can do it. But those people have an over the top mental and emotional maturity that nominal case is lacking, and college is a great way to get there.
Are you really suggesting that you see a CEO in a nominal high school graduate? Most of them don't have a slightest clue how to deal with people, let alone negotiate their terms -- knowledge in domain being aside.
From my more humble vantage point it's been incredibly damaging. He has no social life outside of his career ( basically the people living the same lifestyle) and has been molded to be single mindedly focused on his studies. He's honestly in most ways has because a more dull individual.
(This is kinda funny b/c they were sorta conceived to emulate Oxford and Cambridge - which as I understand are all about he well-rounded "liberal arts eduction")
However that being said, it's hard to argue with the fact that all his colleagues and all the people he meets are incredibly intelligent/hard-working and he in effect has access to the best minds in the world. The fact he is so "networked" mean ofcourse he will always have a very well paying job, and most likely will eventually be in a position of power.
EDIT: A corollary would be that if young Jack Ma went to Harvard, he wouldn't have become current Jack Ma, and would probably be another wealthy lawyer or something
Undergrad programs at Oxford and Cambridge are actually very specialized compared to American degrees. Students typically don't take any classes from outside their primary course. While some courses are broader than a typical major at an American university (e.g "Natural Sciences" at Cambridge or "Philosophy, Politics and Economics" at Oxford) only a small number mix the sciences and humanities, and even then only in certain approved combinations (e.g. at Oxford you can do {Mathematics,CS,Physics} with Philosophy, but not {Chemistry,Biology} with Philosophy).
http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses-listing http://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/courses?ucam-ref=gl...
You create companies by doing a lot of hard work yourself which requires — gasp! — traditional skills like working competently, rapidly and playing nicely in groups of other people.
Only after you've started one or two companies yourself do you get elevated to the lofty heights of pure thought leadership where you don't have to work and people still want to employ you to "lead" them.
What about when you get acquihired?
and, 'acquihire' without actually building a successful product is the ultimate entreper-poser move, isn't it? You didn't build something users want, you just showed you can be a worthwhile employee for a larger corporate entity.
Private success isn't always progress.
Well the exception to that is that having an elite university degree can definitely help getting taken more seriously when fund raising, hiring employees, and gaining customers (as I have found out from personal experience).