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I've learned that the majority of the immigrants who founded tech companies over the last decade didn't graduate from universities that are the highest ranked or considered elite, based on selective admissions criteria. Schools like MIT and Stanford don't graduate more founders than Stevens Institute of Technology or Arizona State University. Even the famed Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) only graduated 15% of the founders of companies in India's Silicon Valley.
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....attendance at top-tier schools might even be inversely correlated with entrepreneurial success. These schools often focus on producing the next generation of research scientists and academicsnot entrepreneurs
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<p>yay, Wisconsin...
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The university that produces the most blue chip CEOs and university professors, the most Peace Corps volunteers, and the most productive and long-running patents isn't Stanford or MITit's the University of Wisconsin. Students "who do the prestige MBA route find it hard to shake the huge offers and end up becoming risk-averse," Schramm says. Graduates of elite schools tend to be book-smart and have incredible SAT scores, but they often lack street smarts and creativity, he says. Plus, they tend to have a sense of entitlement and superiority that leads to not working well with others, he notes.
<p>I think that the emphesis at universities like MIT and Stanford is more toward an academia/theoretical research career path. Hey they enroll the most brilliant students which we would hope use their talents in this way!</p>
<p>Most other universities attract students whose talents and interests are geared more to applied research and development. And because these areas are the economic engine of industry, we dearly need these graduates as well.</p>
<p>I know our son fits this mold. While he could easily go on to a graduate degree program, he has no burning desire to do go the PhD track route. His combined BS/MS degree program is just fine by him. His university emphisizes entreprenurial approaches to learning with the Swanson Lab where student teams work with companies on real product development projects and with an on campus business incubator where students can try their hand as business startup ventures both as a student and following graduation.</p>
<p>This is not to say that many MIT grads go on to be successful applied researcher or that some graduates from other universities become successful academics/theoretical researchers.</p>
<p>A couple of comments on the relevance of this op-ed piece:</p>
<p>The article is referring specifically to foreign-born students attending American universities. Surely that non-random sample has some bearing on the discussion.</p>
<p>The author seems not be taking into account the size of the universities, i.e., the number of graduates. University of Wisconsin is a huge school. I don't know specifics about internationals vs. domestics, but when H and I were students there, we knew a lot of foreign students, both undergrads and graduate students.</p>
<p>yes, looks like the article's author, Vivek Wadhwa, is pulling from his own work at Duke regarding the foreign-born entrepreneurs, followed by anecdotal info from other industry experts, e.g., Carl Schramm of the Kauffman Foundation, when writing about this topic beyond the foreign-born research.</p>
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The number of chairs and professorships in
entrepreneurship and related fields grew 71 percent,
from 237 in 1999 to 406 in 2003.
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<p>The Ivies plus MIT & Stanford make up a good share of the endowed chair list (see the appendix). While endowed faculty chairs may not directly make entrepreneurs in the workplace, this shows that the elite schools are certainly jumping on the trend.</p>