I didn't drop out but here is part of my experience in this post from years ago. It was discouraging to hear the professors talk. Needless to say i don't code. :-) http://www.altamirano.org/marketi...
- Antonio Altamirano
Thankfully I'm in the other 50%, but I can see why many would change their major or drop out. I saw it first hand where many 1st and 2nd year Mechanical Engineering students changed their majors to something 'easier'. The most common reason was difficulty with the required advanced Math courses. Calculus being the road block for many.
- Jeff P. Henderson
If I were entering college now, I would try to go to Olin. I really like their approach.
- Paul Buchheit
nice post, I'm looking for the number of engineers (or per thousand capita ratio) graduating in Greece (or greeks graduating around the world)
- George Tziralis
In CA we have two types of public universities. The UC schools require the professors to do research, where as the State University schools do not. I think the State University schools are much better for undergrad tech education as you get much more attention from your professors.
- Jeff P. Henderson
The UC Berkeley College of Engineering started the Center For Entrepreneurship and Technology http://cet.berkeley.edu to address some of the issues Dodge talks about.
- Ruchira S. Datta
Engineering is hard and requires above-average intelligence. Think about it this way: Statistics tells us that probably 50% of people will be below-average. Wouldn't you want those 50% of the students to drop out before actually becoming an engineer? MIT just doesn't admit that half of the population in the first place, but most schools don't have that luxury.
- Gabe
People have a lot of options for (a) careers (b) money (c) power (d) image (e) attracting mates in the US, compared to China/India. Engineers are not valued very highly in the US compared to businesspeople, doctors, and lawyers.
- Mitchell Tsai
@Gabe: You would think that all the people that go to study Computer Sciences or seek other Engineering degrees are above the 50% average to begin with.
- Amit Morson
somestimes it's a scoail or maturity thing - was for me. I get by. Wished I finished.
- Alan Wilensky
from Alert Thingy
It's because of the fact that people with higher standards of living pursue less demanding challenges offering similar ROI (I = investment+involvement). That's why there's so many non-US students (especially from lower income countries) in engineering and why they're much less inclined to fail.
- Nenad Nikolic
from twhirl
Engineering sucks. I think there's a point where any engineering student realizes that even with a degree they're looking at a pretty mediocre salary working in a really boring job. Add this to the difficult coursework and boring courses, well, engineers are good at math. It adds up to being a raw deal. That being said, if you get into engineering at Stanford or UC Berkley, your ROI would look a lot better then mine. I'm sure a large number of engineering students consider dropping out, even after Calculus.
- Will Higgins™
All I can do is nod. For a couple of years, not a day when by when I didn't consider jumping ship, for all the reasons commenters here have mentioned: long hours, heavy workload, fickle job market, salary barely comparable with what I could expect with a business or law degree. But here I am, a month away from (finally!) finishing my EE degree, and I couldn't be happier.
- Derrick Burns
Continued from above: Basically, I think so many give up because they were looking to get something out of being an engineer: money, prestige, etc. But it's simply too great a commitment on several levels. You really have to pursue engineering because it's something you want to do, something you care about.
- Derrick Burns
I dropped out because Chemical Engineering was not what I was expecting. I wanted more Chemistry, less Math. I switched to IT Management and found it much more interesting. Mind you, I'm Canadian.
- Shey
I remember having a crisis in my final year of Electrical/Computer Engineering. Dropping out was a non-option, but I did consider completely abandoning 3.5 years of engineering study to switch fields and schools during my senior year. In hindsight, I didn't understand what engineers really did. My vision at the time was closer to industrial or product design than engineering. I had to take it on faith in my first two years that I was on a path to do what I was envisioning.
- Kelly Norton
I suspect that more than 50% (even at good schools like GATech, I have friends who have done this) are in the wrong field. Many of my friends went into programming because they enjoyed computers and I've told them they would hate it because they don't like math. They don't listen. :)
- mjc
still others go into engineering due to parental expectation, which I find ridiculous, but understandable
- mjc
Amit: one of the properties of being in the lower 50% is not knowing that you're in the lower 50%. That means many of the applicants do not know they are unqualified.
- Gabe
Extensive aptitude/personality testing could fix this
- Aaron Eaton
Engineering is a tough subject. how does that compare to other subjects?
- John Cass
from twhirl
I actually sit on an advisory board for ASU (arizona state) Poly - I can tell you that what I see is students becoming disillusioned by all the stuff they have to learn before they can go out and create something "cool". The challenge is keeping them engaged through the pre-reqs/early coursework. BTW - IMHO the problem with "drop out and learn X" is that they've intentionally skipped the fundamentals that make good engineers. Just because you can code doesn't mean you can engineer... two different things.
- Brian Roy
Is Computer Science part of engineering? Because it didn't take much training in Computer Science for me to start doing cool stuff. I wrote my first game and posted it onto the internet my freshman year (Core Wars). By my Junior year, I had designed a programming language and integrated in it into a MUD. Pengtoh had contributed to Linux by his sophomore year. On the other hand, I always flunked electrical engineering classes, and couldn't stomach math past linear algebra.
- Piaw Na
I switch from Engineering to a Computer Science degree. Apart from the fact that I wanted to program, there were two reasons. 1) The load was very high (it was close to 40 contact hours/week in first year). 2) The maths was hard - I'm ok at math, but combined with the high load I found I struggled when I wasn't too interested in it.
- Nick Lothian
"the US should staple a Green Card to every foreign student's engineering diploma and encourage them to stay in the USA."
- Clare Dibble
Same as Nick here. Dropped out due to difficulty and lack of passion for the field. Went back later to finish a BS in Computer Information Systems.
- Bill Sanders
I wonder what percentage of medical school students drop out. Engineering is a hard discipline, if you want to be a web dev or a study IT or "new media" instead. Making engineering "softer" because today's students don't like to work hard and expect results instantly will just create generations of mediocre engineers and will not make the US more of an engineering power.
- Kevin Goldsmith
from twhirl
engineers are boring and dry, pay is low, classes are full of non-social ppl. (and almost no girls). Why not study finance, or something, girls and pay is much better.
- imran
Engineering is fun! The big thing is that school's curriculums are frequently irrelevant. For instance, a lot of CS majors require irrelevant Math or Physics not because it's a requirement to do good software (they aren't), but because those classes serve as weeders. The result is, for instance, we get lots of CS majors who can't communicate or string a sentence together. If we rearranged the CS major so that we didn't impose a stupid requirement, we'd get a bigger diversity of candidates and less dropout.
- Piaw Na
Engineering is the best!!!! and for those who says it sucks or that the pay is not good (or that we are boring and dry), its probably because you are in that 50% of retards that dropped out of it. No other profession gets paid as much as an engineer right after graduation, and there is usually more demand for engineers than for anything else. I just think people are too lazy to even try anymore. I dont know why, even graduate school is fun in engineering. Aerospace is the best!!!!!
- Mike hawk
life in a conceptual box is the result .. content with that, you will stay with it .. not content, universes open up
- Gregory Lent
life in a conceptual box? do you even know what you are saying? universes open up when you quit engineering? If only you were to see the world through the eyes of en engineer, we see everything from several different perspectives, not just that of people like you. If anything, engineering has really opened up the world for me as it really is. Stop making those type of remarks. Instead get back to engineering school so you can see what it feels like.
- Mike hawk
I think I know the boxes Gregory is talking about from some of his other comments. Whether you've gone to engineering school is orthogonal to whether you can get outside of them. So it's pretty much irrelevant to this thread.
- Ruchira S. Datta
I bet you the pre-med numbers are similar, but I'm not sure universities necessarily track undergrads who aspire to go to med school. In general, how many freshmen actually stick with the major they pick when they start college?
- Victor Ganata
"The Twitter feed for Lucas Ames’ class in American history has shown some lively exchanges of ideas and opinions among students at the Flint Hill School. One day this month, 11th graders at the private school in Oakton, Va., shared articles on the separation of church and state, pondered the persistence of racism, and commented on tobacco regulation in Virginia now and during the Colonial period—all in the required Twitter format of 140 or fewer characters. "
- Howard Rheingold
Howard, interesting post, might be cool to mention the recent discussion in the UK about the break away from the Church of England and compare to the colonial period. Were you interested because of the use of the technology or the history? Found you because I was searching on colonial history.
- John Cass
FriendFeed update. Paul Buchheit wrote me and said he's been very sick the past few days. That might explain why he hasn't engaged the way we want. He also offered to do an interview with me to discuss the future of FriendFeed and what they are doing at Facebook soon. We're working that out, hopefully soon (but might not be until November sometime)
Bruce: FriendFeed=Facebook. So, I'm interested in what he's doing and I'm a big fan of Facebook's. Twitter needs some competition. The Fail Whale is getting to me.
- Robert Scoble
I know it's a stretch but can we gather specific questions for Paul to answer?
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
When other sites like twitter come out with new features, you want to be at the front of the excited crowd. FriendFeed will make you into that curmudgeon who's always saying, "So what? They did that two years ago at FriendFeed."
- Bruce Lewis
Cjay: I've been working on this interview since before Facebook bought FriendFeed. :-)
- Robert Scoble
manielse: well, the interview isn't on 100% yet and now that I've talked about it in public who knows what will happen? But if it does happen of course we'll get you involved.
- Robert Scoble
Cjay: I might be a rusty wheel, but remember two things: 1. I put many many thousands of hours into FriendFeed before the sale, bringing my audience over here at great risk to my personal brand. Lots of "experts" like Mike Arrington told me I was wrong to do that. 2. I'm still here.
- Robert Scoble
Cjay: actually it's not. It just looks risky.
- Robert Scoble
To those giving Scoble crap for being on FF, aren't you tired of that? You all have been doing that for at least a year. Enough. For us on FF, we'd love to see an interview, thanks.
- Eric - seven eleven
Chicken soup - but stay away from those soul books ;) Hope you're up to speed soon, Paul.
- Micah
Looking at the time-scale, doesn't that actually answer the question? You don;t wait THAT long to deliver good news or to debunk a false rumour that killings your platform (well, Zucks platform).
- Jim Connolly
Paul - sorry to hear that! (it's 2:30 am here, I can empathize with your sleep problem)
- Susan Beebe
from BuddyFeed
Eric, sorry if it sounded like I was giving him crap. That wasn't my intention. I think Scobleizer has a serious career decision to make: http://ourdoings.com/ourdoin...
- Bruce Lewis
Via Google Translate? The number of supported languages is impressive.
- John E. Bredehoft
from fftogo
It looks a bit choppy, but it's still very inderstandable. Good job Jeremiah (and G translate)
- TobiasVerhoog.com
If you want a better translation btw try: Bedankt voor uw uitnodiging, dit is mijn poging om in het Nederlands te schrijven via Friendfeed Translate.
- TobiasVerhoog.com
Trippy. I don't speak or read Dutch, but I understood that.
- Melinda Roberts
English speakers benefit because our language is derived from both the Germanic languages and the Latin languages, so we can make out the occasional Dutch or Spanish word. Hand me something like Finnish, however, and I'm thrown entirely.
- John E. Bredehoft
Didn't know you could shut down or even own a Twitter hashtag. Brings up q's. 1st is why doens't the community just keep using it?
- Doug Haslam
answers: you can't, he doesn't, and the community will. :)
- Hillary Hartley
interesting post, thanks Doug, I've been curious about just how influential #TCOT was. Especially after they tried to influence Ford through Scott Monty. This seems like a falling out between the two people who originally started the group. I would think the people using the hashtag would just continue to use it.
- John Cass
Doug, thought it was a good movie, what about the ending?
- John Cass
I hadn't read the novel yet (I will!) but caught up on the original ending. i think blaming Dr. M for the attack worked thematically. I'm wondering how over-the-top the squid would have been. There must have been a reason they left it out.
- Doug Haslam
the ending was better in a way, but I think they should have been true to the book
- John Cass
is that a blog, or a social network? I'd query IBM in detail on exactly what they are calling a blog. I talked with an IBM executive a few years ago, and it seemed to be more of a social networking tools rather than real blogs. Just checking.
- John Cass
Interesting question. I'll have to ask next time I'm talking with one of the IBM guys. Thanks.
- Nathan Gilliatt
yes it was something of surprise to me.
- John Cass
I liked Dave Winer's quote, especially the part about quitting a company.
- John Cass
John: 'it depends' is about the best answer I can come up with.
- Brian Oberkirch
that's a good point Brian, depends on the size of the community and your goals
- John Cass
I do think you can manage the process, also, that expecting one person to manage everything is a little silly. Kind of in the same vein as expecting a subject matter expert to miraculously become a great corporate blogger, without giving them any time off to blog, or monitor. I think it is all about building an infrastructure.
- John Cass
E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez » The Impact of Corporate Culture on Social Media (IBM’s Case Study) by Adam Christensen - http://www.elsua.net/2009...
[...] here’s the main point: That culture is, in my view, the most overlooked, underestimated factor determining whether social media succeeds or fails in a company. And when corporate culture and social media are pitted against each other, social media will always fail. Always."
- Neville Hobson
I enjoyed reading this post, great points, especially in the last slide
- John Cass