<p>With quite a few comments about the lack of jobs available to engineering graduates, the continued outsourcing of heavy engineering industries, and a perceived lack of prestigious engineering jobs I thought this article may be of interest. However, the article really focuses on the need in Europe. I personally think there is at least as great of a need here in the U.S. yet, Im unaware of any engineering curriculum that has core components in entrepreneurship [bringing products to the marketplace, designing business plans, raising funding, etc.].</p>
<p>At my UG these courses were offered (usually in conjunction with the business school) but they were elective classes and only the most driven students or those who heard about it from word of mouth enrolled. </p>
<p>I agree that such a course would be beneficial to engineering graduates but with today’s engineering curriculum, I’m not sure where such training could be added without removing a critical course or two. Most students have to take an Engineering Finance/Economics class and a communications class–maybe these two classes should be expanded to cover entrepreneurship.</p>
<p>Sure it would be great to add these type of courses to the engineering curriculum, but what would you eliminate from the current curriculum instead? Or are we making this a 5 year degree?</p>
<p>I am not sure that I know of any that have that as part of the CORE curriculum, but I know at UIUC we had a program that was essentially the equivalent of minoring in “entrepreneurship” that was available to everyone who wanted to take it. Personally, I didn’t, but I knew a lot of people who did, and they spoke highly of it. I don’t know how it is looked at from the outside though since it is a new program. They are making a big push though, and the keynote speaker at my graduation was Carl Schramm, the President/CEO of the Kaufmann Foundation. For anyone interested, his speech was kind of lame, unfortunately.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t know that you can really teach entrepreneurship. I feel like you can encourage it, but in my mind, anyone with a little bit of an enterprising spirit can be an entrepreneur, even without a college degree. The value of those programs, from my perspective, is making the hurdles you need to jump over to be a successful entrepreneur seem a little shorter since you have been taught some of the business aspects. Still, being an entrepreneur takes creativity and hard work, and those are two things that are really not easy to teach.</p>
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<p>Heh, there were courses at my UG school on this sort of stuff as well, except they weren’t counted as “Non-technical electives,” so hardly anyone took them. I asked the assistant dean of the engineering school why one of them was considered a technical class, and he told me it was because you did an accounting spreadsheet on one homework.</p>
<p>I told him not only was that a stupid rule, but he was also a moron for thinking it made sense. Then again, he previously didn’t allow me to do an honors research project in one semester instead of two even though I only had one other class I was taking, so he might be an isolated jackass datapoint.</p>
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<p>This has now been added to my vocabulary.</p>
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<p>I agree that once can’t TEACH one to be a great entrepreneur much like you can’t formally teach a pianist to be the next Mozart. However, I feel that perhaps you can open the door or broaden the student’s perspectives and have them start thinking that through an entrepreneurial perspective. I imagine that this course would cover the basics of venture creation and funding but also have lectures from successful entrepreneurs.</p>
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<p>Agreed.</p>
<p>10char</p>
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<p>:) 
. … Perhaps you should have thought of doing ME at your UG school. DS had at least two entrepreneurial projects, one in ME and another in HCI. It was a very busy senior year. </p>
<p>Some majors and programs, and goals, do not have the time or resources to pursue enterpreneurship. Student’s engineering goals begin in getting into A engineering school, a Good engineering school, Doing research, finding a Job, and then finding a High paying engineering job.</p>
<p>The required freshman class here is on entrepreneurship. It’s a 1-credit survey course, and a lot more work/reading that I had originally hoped.</p>
<p>penn requires engineering entrepreneurship classes in certain curricula, and has a great engineering entrepreneurship minor (which i did)</p>
<p>lots of interplay with wharton courses, too</p>
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<p>I definitely agree that these are the things many students worry about. However, I have to also call into question the legitimacy of these concerns, for both the student, and the country as a whole. Primarily out of generational teaching we learn to focus on these things and forget to question the context in which they are pertinent. </p>
<p>My father worked for the same company for 27 years. Upon his hire, he was promised the evermore elusive pension, excellent benefits, and a range of other perks. Twenty seven years later, his pension fell to zero, benefits zero. Effectively, his retirement is now contingent upon those things he has done over the last twenty seven years [investing, etc.]. This has become an ever increasing situation among numerous industries, many of them engineering intensive. Most of the young people I know work only 3-5 years for their first employer, and pensions are called a thing of the past. Even if you are promised such things, it would seem negligent to take them at face value given what we have seen in recent years. Social security is bound to come to a screeching halt in the not too distant future thus, by focusing so much on these ideals that perhaps were once relevant, but no longer are, we leave ourselves at the mercy of massive corporations that will leave you penniless at 65, without blinking. </p>
<p>On top of this, more and more engineering intensive industry work is being outsourced to cheaper labor markets leaving less of these well-paid jobs here for our graduating students. </p>
<p>The only way to create more jobs is through entrepreneurship, and thankfully start-ups are the only thing the U.S. actually still does better than everyone else. My question is why we dont make it easier for our students to get off a beaten path that has deemed itself, if nothing else, far from ideal. Now, Im not saying that one course in undergrad will change this, but it would be a start. Personally, I would like to see a massive shift in education that strays away from teaching students to be good employees, and instead make them into good employers. Most entrepreneurs do teach themselves everything, and while motivation and creativity are requirements, I believe many engineering students already have these things but they are just trained to think of themselves as employees, not employers. Most of them have never even considered how to go about starting a business, yet, surely they have had at least a few ideas worthy of this consideration.</p>
<p>An alternative to a formal course would be to increase funding for student design competitions. My UG had annual competitions for best designed robots, green-idea and so forth. </p>
<p>Maybe more interdisciplinary work with the business majors?</p>
<p>Very much agree. DS and mentor have incorporated and looking for $$. Their project does take $, time, labor, and attitude. </p>
<p>DS went to CMU and he did take the enterp. non-tech electives. He provided technical work, while other students provided artistic and business inputs. One class had a corporate sponsor, patented the product, and gave each student $1000. So now DS is an inventor with a patent.</p>
<p>“I imagine that this course would cover the basics of venture creation and funding but also have lectures from successful entrepreneurs.”</p>
<p>Exactly how our freshman forum is done. Successful entrepreneurs speak, then we’re assigned all these readings, and have to write responses. Great class, in theory. But it is a lot of work IMHO.</p>
<p>Not to completely hijack the topic but in retrospect, High school was utterly useless. Besides the AP courses there were a lot of filler courses that wasted time. </p>
<p>If it was up to me all HS graduates would have to take a personal finance and public speaking class.</p>
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<p>I dont really think it is hijacking the topic lol, so Im going to add to it I agree completely. There is no doubt that kids should have a little art in school, a little fun too, but by and large I felt the same way about hs. I was an athlete, yet I can remember taking tennis class?? We had A-B days where your classes were separate on both days one of these days I played tennis for two hrs, followed by pottery for two, then on to Spanish. In retrospect, this was a complete and utter waste of my time. I cant speak Spanish, I have no interest in making pots, and I could have picked up my sub-par tennis skills from playing with my buddies if I wanted to. </p>
<p>The reason why the majority of our country is in such great debt is that they are never, not even one time, taught [personal] finance skills. Even in finance and accounting classes in college the focus is from a corporate point of view. We graduate our students with an average of $20,000 of debt and send them into the world with no knowledge about finance. Right about this same time, a lot of students sign a mortgage note and buy a new car setting them back even further. Now, they are 100% dependent on the company they work for and fear losing their job, and are afraid to take any risk entrepreneurially. Its a complete mess in my opinion.</p>
<p>That personal finance “class” needs to take place in high school though, not college. I have way too many friends who could have used that 4 years ago BEFORE they were broke. Then again, I have some really dumb friends, haha.</p>
<p>DS got exposed to money management, insurance, and attitudes in grade school. In high school he was exposed to leadership and business from our local Chamber of Commerce mentoring program.</p>
<p>Personally I believe that even if you have exposure and training, you must be mentally prepared for the lessons. Money issues taught in HS are over-ridden by hormones.</p>
<p>Agreed with your last sentence LongPrime. I took a lot of econ/finance/business in HS, and not until college, when I became broke, did I realise their value. It’s almost something that’s best learned on your own.</p>