Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Universities Should Prepare Founders

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 333 posts

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#231

Post by impendia »

oytis wrote: post #164
bix6 wrote: post #61

I don’t necessarily disagree with this but is it the universities job to prepare founders at the expense of everyone else? Under his proposal the motivated founders succeed and everyone else is a loser. This is a very VC focused lens that ignores all the other possible outcomes a human could pursue that are valuable. Established corps need workers, unis need new teachers, hospitals need doctors, etc. So we should let…

My first reflex would be to ctiticise PG, but after reading the article, I don't think I agree here. First he doesn't say universities should prepare founders - his advice is to those universities that do want to do that. Second, his advice is basically to skip BS business education and make students good professionals, well-rounded intellectuals, not afraid of starting a business. Anyone would benefit from such educ…

> those universities that do want to do that

As a university professor, I've seen that all universities want to do everything.

By which I mean, they employ all sorts of people who are pushing a huge range of agendas. You can't meaningfully speak about "what universities want", because various factions tend to expect free rein to pursue their goals, and there is no mechanism to get everyone pushing in the same direction.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#232

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #199
dofm wrote: post #152

This is shockingly vapid and wishy-washy even for PG. Leaving this weird, rather Valley-specific, even YC-specific, navel-gazing definition of "founder" aside, universities should do what they promise to do for their students. And if possible for way, way, way less money. He seems quite out of touch with the level of economic hardship involved in being a student; a huge number of students already work a couple of job…

> He seems quite out of touch with the level of economic hardship involved in being a student; a huge number of students already work a couple of jobs and are navigating small businesses, especially here in the UK where he apparently now lives. They aren't going to have enough "free time" to play with a "project" even if a bit more is made available by loosening the curriculum. Empirically, student free time grew for…

When I was an undergrad (35 years ago) I had at least 2 days a week where I was so busy that I had to choose between eating or sleeping. I usually picked eating because not sleeping meant I could pick up another shift or grind on a class project (also because I was young... if I tried that now I'd probably die)

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#233

Post by ndriscoll »

locknitpicker wrote: post #197
rfgplk wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is ironic, because self-publishing then should automatically qualify you for a PhD. In fact, I believe more people should take this approach. As far as I'm aware, there's no law or regulation from declaring yourself a "PhD" backed by autoresearch.

> Which is ironic, because self-publishing then should automatically qualify you for a PhD. No. What qualifies you as a researcher is being able to output work that is accepted by your peers. Hence the peer review process is critical. You fail to meet this bar if you publish something in blogspot or even arxiv for that matter.

Eh, in theoretical fields we now have good formal verification tools so that someone publishing a code repo on their personal website is more meaningful in pretty much every way than a peer reviewed journal article. The article becomes an archaic formality.

Like I get that the current social norms around "research" might not be there yet, but if they refuse to adapt, I just see that as a reason to defund "research" and start from scratch.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#235

Post by lenerdenator »

My brother in Christ, they don't finish their degrees.

If you have some VC throwing hackathons in NorCal where they find people in their early/mid-20s, tell them they're the most brilliant people in the history of the human race, and promise them millions of dollars for their project if they drop out, there's going to be a lot of people with severe personality disorders coming out of that situation and there's nothing the university system can do about that.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#236

Post by elevatortrim »

youngtaff wrote: post #148
bix6 wrote: post #61

I don’t necessarily disagree with this but is it the universities job to prepare founders at the expense of everyone else? Under his proposal the motivated founders succeed and everyone else is a loser. This is a very VC focused lens that ignores all the other possible outcomes a human could pursue that are valuable. Established corps need workers, unis need new teachers, hospitals need doctors, etc. So we should let…

Article also ignore’s that very few founders succeed Has anyone ever plotted the lifespan of YC companies from each cohort? Most of them end up dead…

But only one of them need to succeed for PG to make a lot of money.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#237

Post by [deleted] »

dofm wrote: post #156
Swankivo wrote: post #65

Agreed. A university is a place for learning how to ask questions, and it runs on curiosity. Starting a company is just a means. When there is something you are curious about, or a problem you want solved, a startup is one of the ways to go after it. I went to university in Korea and I'm on my third startup. I watched startup clubs, government grant programs, and university-run programs all operate with the stated go…

> Agreed. A university is a place for learning how to ask questions, and it runs on curiosity. This is a rather oversimplified, old-fashioned take on the purpose of university. University in the 21st century is surely a straightforward high-stakes gamble, particularly in the UK and the USA: can I risk taking three or four years away from the job market, and go into life-changing, multi-decade debt, in order to gain q…

[deleted]

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#238

Post by fantasizr »

neomantra wrote: post #222

I am more interested in the question of how Y-Combinator has changed Stanford over the last two decades rather than the question of how Stanford should change to accommodate Y-Combinator. Notice there is no mention of ethics, philosophy, or human connection, except maybe Zuck being a psych major. Do we really want the future of education to be an incubator pipeline? That said I wholehearted agree with the second half…

Elizabeth Holmes, SBF, Do Kwon, Phoebe Gates (anyone else?) all needed a Stanford freshman ethics seminar.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#239

Post by neutronicus »

Juliate wrote: post #194
dofm wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but what percentage of people doing any given class end up specialising in it? It's not their job to "inject" it but universities are going to have to grapple with the notion that if they want to keep admitting students, then there aren't enough jobs in any market for the students on their courses. So some truly functional support for self-employment, startups, small business working generally seems inevitable.…

> then there aren't enough jobs in any market for the students on their courses. That has always been the case, because the purpose of universities is not feeding the market with workers or founders, it's feeding society with educated people. Which is incidentally an excellent basis for both founder and worker roles.

A University education is priced as though as it has near-term ROI. The government has subsidized it on the basis that it's opening an investment with strong near-term ROI to its citizens.

I don't think you can claim that this ROI is not its purpose.

Post reply on HN