I'm an MIT grad (Course 6 2012) and respectfully disagree. College is a great place to start working on a startup and meet potential co-founders. PG has written about this before: http://paulgraham.com/mit.html

Also, regarding the pledge: "This pledge to give back is a personal choice and not binding and funding will not be conditional on a student signing a pledge." (https://sandbox.mit.edu/apply-3/) It sounds like a pretty reasonable program.