Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-eric-schmidt-us-digital-service-academy-2020-7

by plumeria • 6 years ago

197 229 6 years ago

businessinsider.com

thaumasiotes2• 6 years ago

Huh. As the page loads for me, the headline is also the entirety of the content.

Though it is longer than presented here. The rest is "...and funnel tech workers into government work".

The news is summarizing itself now!

dhosek• 6 years ago

The formatting at businessinsider is often pretty crummy. There is a whole article after the picture and some bullet points.

thaumasiotes2• 6 years ago

No there isn't, not for me.

vsskanth4• 6 years ago

I've always wondered why mega billionaires from this era such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg etc. haven't built universities like Stanford, Duke, Cornell etc. - all started by monopolists from the previous era. I guess Eric Schmidt would be the first one

ghaff12• 6 years ago

It's a federal commission that Schmidt co-chairs.

haven't built universities like Stanford, Duke, Cornell etc.

I assume the answer is that they generally find that it makes a lot more sense to give oodles of cash to their alma mater or some favored school to get your name on a building and/or really beef up a department than to try to found a new school which would likely take decades to establish any sort of reputation.

xhkkffbf• 6 years ago

In other words, he's not spending his money, he's spending our money.

(Although that might make sense given the mission.)

vsskanth4• 6 years ago

Yeah, but if you were Jeff Bezos why would you settle for a name on a building or a department, over Bezos University ?

bluedevil2k5• 6 years ago

You're underestimating the egos of billionaires and how they love winning compared to other billionaires. A name on a building is nice. A name on a university that's mentioned with Duke and MIT...now that's something you can brag about. The owners of NBA teams - all billionaires, most willing to lose money year-to-year in order to win and beat the other billionaires. The women's basketball league in Russia - teams owned by oligarchs who all lose money on the league but spend lavishly to beat each other.

agustif• 6 years ago

Xavier Niel is a billionaire from France built Free Telecom (big telco in france) and has 42.fr school, whichisnot a unibut kinda?

tasogare• 6 years ago

True. But yes, it’s not an university. I also doesn’t deliver any kind of state recognized degree (IIRC), which can be a problem for visa applications.

ojnabieoot3• 6 years ago

A big part of that was that there were simply far less universities in the mid-late 1800s than there are now, so there was a demand - this is particularly true for the West Coast. Likewise, both Cornell and MIT, though private and philanthropist-funded, were also land grant universities, and part of a deliberate policy (starting with Lincoln) to increase the number of US universities, along with providing a more "practical" baccalaureate. In general the post-Civil War era in the US was a period of significant educational reform and expansion at all levels.

vsskanth4• 6 years ago

don't you think the demand still exists today ? the economy seems to be in ever increasing need of a highly skilled workforce, in addition to reskilling existing ones.

pvarangot• 6 years ago

Maybe because Stanford, Duke, Cornell, etc... still serve them well. It's not that they don't have huge influences into how those institutions work.

vsskanth4• 6 years ago

Well there's utility and then there's legacy.

rmetzler• 6 years ago

Hasso Plattner, one of the founders of SAP founded the Hasso Plattner Institut in Potsdam, Germany in 1998. It’s not a full fledged university, but a part of the university of Potsdam. A lot of the alumni work for SAP.

calbear81• 6 years ago

What about Draper University in San Mateo?

surajrmal• 6 years ago

It's not accredited, and for good reason.

bluedevil2k5• 6 years ago

I agree with you big-time on this. Many of these guys are concerned about "their legacy" and also philanthropy. Why not create a top university named after themselves that seeks to be at the forefront of technology/medicine/biotech (whatever they choose). Better yet, as some have suggested, why not donate enough to a university to rename it after themselves and take it over, adjust the curriculum to the desired goal, hire the experts in the fields to teach and study, and see results 5-10-15 years down the line.

As a nice bonus, why not turn it into a basketball powerhouse school too, something to help brand the school, like Duke or Stanford. Something MIT is missing.

throwaway_USD• 6 years ago

Ever hear of Trump University? Granted he isn't a "mega billionaire"...and turns out it wasn't a University at all, in fact it was shut down and resulted in lawsuits Trump settled for $25M.

yreg• 6 years ago

George Soros built Central European University[0], focused on promotion of (liberalist) open societies.

Hungarian PM recently kicked them out of Hungary, so it moved to Vienna.

[0] https://www.ceu.edu/

zwaps• 6 years ago

In Turkey, the best private universities (that are also up there as best universities in the country) are still held by the corresponding company holdings, i.e. Koc and Sabanci.

By contrast, in Germany there are no universally notable private universities at all (save for some business schools).

thephyber6• 6 years ago

We got a Trump University. Does that count? /s

Not to point out the obvious, but 2 of your examples never bothered to stay in undergrad university long enough to get a degree and they managed to succeed beyond all of their contemporaries.

Perhaps it says something about our current university system/paradigm that the current wealthy have chosen not to support this route. Or maybe it says more about the Gilded Age robber barons that they chose this route (in addition to the large inheritance fortunes they left).

Marc Andreessen's "Build Stuff" article[1] pointed at the lack of university capacity in the USA (I doubt this is accurate[2]), but leveling up the average university to be closer to the top tier universities would certainly help or at least justify the current cost of university.

[1] https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/

[2] https://www.quora.com/How-many-college-students-are-there-in...

akhilcacharya3• 6 years ago

Overall I liked the Build Stuff article, but the idea that there's a lack of capacity is incredibly silly. It's not difficult to get into a Cal State school, UC Merced or my alma mater for instance.

mensetmanusman• 6 years ago

Yes, we need more medical schools for example. We have way more students interested in medicine than available spots in school/residencies.

WalterBright3• 6 years ago

Medical school seats are controlled by the AMA, in order to keep doctor pay up.

throwaway5752• 6 years ago

That's a bit reductionist in terms of Cornell's history.

hindsightbias• 6 years ago

Olin is pretty recent but came from an older trust, less than 1/2 a billion I think.

randomdata• 6 years ago

The present day mega billionaires have spent their careers building/funding the technologies to make universities obsolete.

setpatchaddress• 6 years ago

I can't help but think ARPA is a better model than what sounds like a government-controlled vocational school for script kiddies.

michaelbuckbee• 6 years ago

The article doesn't mention it, but given the current crisis and the huge move to remote education underway currently it would be interesting if this had an approach that took that into account.

hprotagonist• 6 years ago

cool, give it a century or so to get used to itself and we'll see how we've done.

x87678r2• 6 years ago

funnel tech workers into government work

Government work doesn't pay well, so it will never be as prestigious as Stanford or MIT.

EDIT - previous title had the headline part where it said it will "rival Stanford and MIT"

H8crilA• 6 years ago

You know that Silicon Valley was originally created as a government project? Government sponsored research and enterprises.

jbay808• 6 years ago

I don't think this is in conflict with the GP's point.

jonwachob91• 6 years ago

Not everything in the world can be measured by pay.

Sure, an FBI Criminal Profiler earns a tiny fraction of what a google dev earns. But one can take serial killers off the street, and the other just makes ads more annoying.

A Social Worker earns almost nothing, but they get to help the most needy of people get the help they need. A FB engineer earns 10x the pay, but just makes ads more annoying.

A teacher earns almost nothing, but they get to teach the next generation of society. An Amazon engineer earns 10x the pay, but just finds ways to sell you more stuff you don't need.

No one goes into government work b/c the pay, they do it for reasons they find more important.

xenospn2• 6 years ago

"The common good" is something that is easily lost on the vast majority of people in tech, it seems.

tehlike5• 6 years ago

"the other just makes ads more annoying"

The meme that never dies. Advertising funded tons of tons of businesses on apps and on web, employed hundreds of thousands directly and created a large economy.

Disclaimer: Former google, current facebook employee, working in ads.

x87678r2• 6 years ago

I completely agree. Just the headline I didn't agree with. Universities for teaching, social work, fbi profilers will never be as prestigious as those where you can get trained to earn millions.

md2020• 6 years ago

Not to mention the fact that the government is one of the only funding sources for blue-sky research nowadays. Pretty much the only surviving research institutions that rival Bell Labs are the national laboratories. Getting to work with insanely bright people at the frontiers of your field (without the funding problems of academia) should be considered a benefit on its own. Also, many of the national labs pay quite well. They don’t use the USG pay scale which is a misconception I see very often in these discussions.

Rafuino2• 6 years ago

This is so true, but it's also an issue. If you can't make a living in government, then you're more likely to leave or turn to rent-seeking opportunities (i.e. becoming a lobbyist after a few years working on Capitol Hill). I worked in public policy for years but had 5 roommates even 5 years in and was saving zero money. In order to build a stable future for myself, I had to leave government. If I could've stayed working on the issues I was passionate about and been able to buy a house or start a family, then I may have stayed. But I couldn't do that, so I left...

nogabebop232• 6 years ago

Yet there are still lots of people who work for various government and quasi-judicial organizations, and the military. Two big selling points:

(1) you will likely get lots of resources to do things that your typical private sector organization doesn't prioritize, like longer term research.

(2) Nobody thinks a job != your career anymore; you could start out with a few years in government service and get education & experience on their dime, then move into the private sector. As more opportunities to get started get harder to find or aquire, this will be a huge motivator.

082349872349872• 6 years ago

On a tangent: when he was young, Schmidt worked (alongside a young Wadler) on the Poplar functional language.

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/parc/techReports/CSL-81-11_Re...

ghaff12• 6 years ago

It reads to me more like Schmidt is proposing the government set up its own "US Digital Academy" so that they don't have to compete with MIT and Stanford. (I assume the model would be something like free or low tuition in exchange for a requirement to work for the government for x years upon graduation.)

nogabebop232• 6 years ago

If so they can build on established offerings like officer training programs that many countries have: get a free education at a military or civillian university in exchange for x years of service. The future of military engagements is likely to be heavily related to cyberspace, so you can enlist someone without the threat of field duty, which is likely far more attractive to many young people.

Rafuino2• 6 years ago

The Scholarship for Service program already exists in the US.

https://www.sfs.opm.gov/

neilk• 6 years ago

I think you're probably closer to the truth there. Even if it isn't an ISA university, my first guess is that it's a way of laundering government funding to create an institution under private control. (This is how most great universities get their start anyway, it's nothing new).

I'm sure ES also has a vision for a modern university that has merit, but I'd be skeptical if it was about more free inquiry and public service - probably more alignment with industry.

Google execs often couch their plans with claims about how it's going to be good for the world, especially partnerships with the government. For instance, the takeover of Moffett field to provide a place for the founders to park their jets, as well as space for the new Google HQ.

ghaff12• 6 years ago

I'm sure ES also has a vision for a modern university that has merit,

I don't disagree with any of your points. Cornell Tech in NYC is arguably an example of reimagining things with at least a somewhat clean sheet of paper but I haven't studied it in any detail. One thing that is probably be clear is that there's too much stovepiping in universities in general. MIT's new interdisciplinary Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing is another example of trying to bring more disciplines under one roof.

bigpumpkin• 6 years ago

The question isn't whether it will rival Stanford and MIT, because it never will with a one year program. The question is whether it could incrementally attract more talent into the industry.

curiousllama5• 6 years ago

This will fail not because it's a bad idea, but because the government will reject it.

Contrary to popular belief, established universities do a very effective job of preparing tech talent for government jobs. The issues, which Schmidt seems to miss, are twofold:

(1) the government, with few exceptions, is a TERRIBLE place to build effective tech skills. Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low paid, there is very little creativity and variety in which to build unique technology, and no reward for the BS.

(2) Current universities already prepare tech workers well. In some cases, there are even joint CS-Public Policy degrees (e.g., MSCAPP at UofC).

Those engineers with policy expertise just don't want to work for the government. I know; I was one of them, and I could not for the life of me find a policy tech job that paid even HALF what tech companies would pay me.

Schmidt should focus on building "the department of innovative technology" and pay engineers appropriately.

Upvoter333• 6 years ago

"(1) the government, with few exceptions, is a TERRIBLE place to build effective tech skills. Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low paid, there is very little creativity and variety in which to build unique technology, and no reward for the BS."

Strong claim; links or citations to back it up? (Not necessarily doubting you, but it sounds a bit like a right-wing talking point, and hence I ask)

You're right about pay problems, though. With public sector jobs, you have to do it for the calling, not the bottom-line cash (imho).

bpodgursky• 6 years ago

I think the null hypothesis is more useful here; assume that NOWHERE builds tech skills until otherwise demonstrated.

What you see: a bunch of tech startups founded by ex-Google, ex-FB, ex-Amazon employees.

What you never see: hot tech startups founded by ex-government bureaucrats

At very best/worst, you get beltway contractors who have "skills" at extracting money from the government. Those contractor firms NEVER end up selling back to private industry, because they have nothing to offer.

I think that this is one of those cases where "citation needed" is a way to avoid the blindingly obvious truth of the statement. No, we haven't done a controlled experiment on the government vs private enterprise in skill creation. Sometimes you have to use common sense and obvious experience.

95_JL_OK2• 6 years ago

I'd tack onto the first point: obsolete technology everywhere. Worked in the public sector for a short while and the amount of outdated tech being used is astounding. Some of the solutions being discussed as "new" have been outdated for decades.

Having to deal with overwhelming bureaucracy in exchange for working on what everywhere else would be legacy systems really killed any desire to stay.

nitrogen4• 6 years ago

The most important aspect of any technology is that it works. In that regard, functioning "legacy" systems are ideal systems. The legacy bureaucracies are the problem.

Kind of like SpaceX popularizing rocket reuse, we should think of older code, languages, and frameworks as "battle tested", not "legacy". They should only be replaced if it's clear that essential maintenance is not possible, if a critical requirement isn't being met by the old system and will confidently be met by a new one, or if it can be demonstrated that a new system will save more money than improving the old one.

jayparth• 6 years ago

I mean... "The Department of Innovative Technology" is kind of what the USDS is. It's ran by very competent people, and do short "tours of duty" with competent SV engineers instead of long-term, safe, bureaucratic jobs. Here's a podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvXN7fRTVds

I think you're misinformed on the topic, but that's OK. I assumed it was a typical government agency until I got further information, and then I changed my mind. Will you change your mind?

Jtsummers5• 6 years ago

I'll reiterate my point from another post:

It is not a lack of talent, it is a lack of good governance/administration that causes most software/IT failures for the government. USDS is actually pretty cool, and they seem to be doing really great work. But they're a small part of the system. In order to actually improve software/IT within the government we need to fix a lot of small problems.

Here are some more:

Just the universal waste within the way government treats software acquisition. If you ran a private company and you had small teams (each less than 10) going out and individually buying a software system, say half of them end up buying small-team licenses for Visual Studio as an example, you'd want to murder someone. They could save 20-40% by combining all purchases under a common contract.

Or instead of hiring an actual system administrator, the new guy gets tasked with managing in-house servers. Oh, but it's not one person for an office of 1k, it's every small team of 5-15 people dedicating one person to manage 1-5 servers. Servers that could, mostly, be shared across teams and so instead of 100 admins you could probably get by with 10-20 full-time and trained admins, along with a fraction of the servers and a fraction of the software cost.

The US government does this all the time because there is little-to-no communication involved. What's hilarious(ly sad) is that I've seen this where the purchases went through the same purchasing officer. A bunch of teams all buying expensive (because of scale) licenses when they could've combined them into one joint contract. Millions wasted a year doing crap like this even in smaller branches.

Fix the crap like that and then USDS's model can become effective and universal. Until then, there is so much waste abounding within the way US government does software/IT that it will always be a joke.

natalyarostova3• 6 years ago

Classic modern HN comment. The hard working person with a history of success who is trying a risky ambitious project will fail, because they didn't consider the few things a commentor instantly spotted as problems.

curiousllama5• 6 years ago

Yea, that's fair. I should - I do! - commend the effort.

Some good things here: (1) It's good to try to solve problems. (2) There is a shortage of tech talent in the country (3) Eric Schmidt is very smart. Sure as heck smarter than me.

Still - from my admittedly-limited vantage point, I can name a four people with degrees in public policy and CS (or similar) that tried and failed to get good jobs in government, so they took $150k+ tech jobs in the private sector instead. So seeing someone saying "the problem with government tech is one of pipeline" is jarring to say the least.

MattGaiser2• 6 years ago

It is not a few things, but rather one of the core reasons governments cannot do technology well.

zjaffee4• 6 years ago

Except in the world of education there's been a substantial amount of people without their own direct experience in the field who've put out claims that they can materially change things when they have been completely unable to do so time and time again.

I do see value for an institution described as such in this post, but much more on the research side of things with a secondary focus on should a new branch of the military be established to focus specifically on cyber issues, such an institution could become valuable in the same vain as something like west point.

TheCoelacanth• 6 years ago

You could flip it around and say that the commenter is the exact type of person that Schmidt needs to sell on this idea for it to be a success (people who would study tech and then go work for the government) and they aren't buying it.

Schmidt failed to consider the perspective of one of the key stakeholders in the area he's trying to change. His idea would get laughed out of the room if he wasn't already a billionaire.

mbesto2• 6 years ago

Classic modern HN comment response. You act like these criticisms are somehow inherently negative...

Just because people love to point out the HN discussion where Drew Houston got scrutiny for Dropbox, doesn't mean that discussion isn't valuable. I'm sure as hell Drew learned a ton from the criticisms.

This is the point of HN - it's OK.

bsanr22• 6 years ago

I wonder if you may be discounting the value of a pipeline that's presumably going to be substantially less expensive than going to a private university.

Perhaps one of the goals here is to flood the government tech sector with new personnel who have been indoctrinated to expect a certain culture, in such a way that the existing structure won't be able to resist changing. If you and your entire cohort have an n-year commitment, and all of you are saying, "No, this is too slow, don't outsource that we need to do it ourselves, that's not the right tech we need to use this," eventually something gives.

curiousllama5• 6 years ago

This is a very good point. A university to transition Business Analysts into junior data scientists or HR reps into HR analysts, train managers in tech fundamentals, and upskill SWEs in security or new tech would be SUPER valuable.

MattGaiser2• 6 years ago

Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low paid, there is very little creativity and variety in which to build unique technology, and no reward for the BS.

Currently a public sector tech worker, although in Canada. We can recruit some great people as although the salaries are not FAANG, they are pretty good for people who don't live in cities with that.

Problem is, they don't give raises or if they do, the raises are tiny. I earned 10,000 more choosing a government job over other offers where I am. I have been in the role 11 months. Recruiters are consistently offering 10,000 more than what I make now. Guess how long the average person stays? Just over one year.

If I quit my current department and went to a different government, I could get that 10,000 dollar raise and if I quit after another 1-2 years there to another government department, I would probably hit near the maximum bracket for tech work in the government unless I took a lead position.

Government also doesn't recruit people out of school for tech unless they have a full slate of internships. You need at least one year of experience to join. So there is this narrow 2-3 year in your career window where government work can make sense.

So not only are you kind of forced out fairly early in your career, but they incentivize spreading your time among many different departments as that is the only time you can get a big salary jump.

Plus all the other things you say are true. Decisions take months for anything.

LatteLazy• 6 years ago

I agree with you. And that's not even the only problem...

Jtsummers5• 6 years ago

Interesting. I don't see the point, though.

The issue with the US government and software is not a lack of talent (within the country, or even within the government itself). But a poor structuring and assigning of responsibilities and a severely risk-averse culture, paired with the overreaction of a risk-accepting culture occasionally showing up and fucking it all.

There is, or will be, sufficient talent in the US to maintain and develop government software systems. Flat out, people keep going into CS and software engineering degree programs. Programming itself is ludicrously accessible compared to nearly any other technical discipline because the cost of entry is about $200 and time.

The problems that actually need to be resolved:

1. Government employees (contrary to popular opinion) are grossly underpaid for their expertise. This leads many of the best to leave and go to private industry and/or government contractors. Those who remain are truly civic minded, or zombies. Moving away from GS helps here (pay for time in grade), but the alternatives are also severely abused. NSPS paid people for changing positions, so there was a ton of job hopping before it was canceled. Expertise wasn't really cultivated, only the same stupid culture of bouncing between jobs you find in parts of private industry. AcqDemo is somewhat better, but in implementation lost all its potential value. Still better than GS, but only barely.

2. In-house development shops are typically made to compete for contracts in the same way as private companies. This creates some interesting conflicts within the organizations. And a ton of the in-house software development efforts are spent on maintenance, not developing new systems. So a different kind of expertise shows up, but not the expertise needed when truly novel projects start up.

3. The people in charge of the IT and software development efforts are usually inexperienced with IT and software development. They're either straight out of college EEs (CS people are at a disadvantage in many government shops) or career civil servant bureaucrats. The latter rely on those same inexperienced EEs. This leads to an incredibly advantage for contractors to push program offices around because they can come off as reliable experts, until you've been burned a few times. But hit a couple milestones and the civil servant in charge is already promoted out of that position and a new one is left holding the bag when shit hits the fan.

4. Risk averse IT severely restricts development environments even when software is made in-house. This leads to incredible slowdowns and often automation is impossible due to having to develop and test on multiple test/dev network enclaves that are separated even from each other. An example is the typical CCB (configuration control board) process which is a monthly (at best) meeting where, mostly, managers decide what new things can be installed on the network. You want an updated version of VS or GCC? Gotta wait a month. You want to use a common library? Gotta wait a month. And that's on top of the delays imposed by security scans (a manual process, that could be automated if it's necessary).

5. Risk accepting IT goes too far the other way as a reactionary response to the risk averse culture that held them back. Their fuck ups lead to the people in (4) being able to justify their positions and cement their culture.

You have to improve the approach to IT, the staffing of the acquisition offices to have competent individuals in the appropriate fields, not just successful (from a promotion perspective) bureaucrats, and probably increase pay across the board for technical people.

throw_m239339• 6 years ago

The issue with the US government and software is not a lack of talent (within the country, or even within the government itself). But a poor structuring and assigning of responsibilities and a severely risk-averse culture, paired with the overreaction of a risk-accepting culture occasionally showing up and fucking it all.

Bureaucracy in a nutshell. I wonder if there is a single country the western world where it is actually efficient...

Jtsummers5• 6 years ago

Bureaucracy will never be efficient. It is resilient and can survive. It is an organism. It presses itself into the cracks and crevices of society until it seems like the essential material composing our structure. But it's not, it's just slime mold.

thephyber6• 6 years ago

While these issues exist, we should look to the countries that have successfully overcome them and shamelessly copy their successful strategies.

The US government already does really well at training people for the military, both leaders and fresh high school grads.

Personally, I think we need to stop passing 2000+ bills into law and instead give our technocrats some high level requirements that they can figure out themselves (hopefully in more of an agile than waterfall way). Assigning a technical person micromanaged requirements written by politicians and lobbyist lawyers will never be an appealing or successful formula.

Jtsummers5• 6 years ago

Perhaps. So what countries overcame these issues by training new people and not addressing the internal systemic issues that lead to the drain or burnout of skilled workers?

How does training of new people address the established culture that encourages hitting milestones (internal) but not achieving the overall mission? How does training of new people address the fundamental problem of developing and testing using 3-20 separate networks with data sharing consisting of bobnet (sneakernet but Bob is the only one authorized to move data between systems)? How does training of new people prevent poaching by contractors or private companies paying 2-3x the salary? How does training of new people fix the problem of inexperienced (training isn't experience) novices running acquisition programs and getting bullied by contractors?

The fundamental model of IT acquisition and software development within the US government is broken. Training the next generation isn't enough, and universities already do that well enough. You have to break the existing system.

Upvoter333• 6 years ago

"Palo Alto-based Stanford University ... and MIT have historically been the primary talent pools for the tech industry"

This is far from true. If you look at the total workforce in tech, the majority is by far from much larger, public schools, like Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, etc., etc. MIT and Stanford have had amazing great people, but they are far from the "primary" source of talent.

(yes, a bit of an aside, but it rankles)

curiousllama5• 6 years ago

Agreed - University of Maryland is a huge tech feeder to public sector orgs, believe it or not.

vmception4• 6 years ago

All the DC area computer science programs feed right into the NSA and defense.

Which is funny because Silicon Valley companies won't think candidates from those schools are that interesting, while simultaneously thinking that the intelligence and defense has better programmers. People are people.

Zhenya• 6 years ago

In order of ranking and total enrollment (sourced from us news)

1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 3,130

2 Stanford University 3,444 ' 3 University of California--Berkeley 2,337

4 California Institute of Technology 536

5 Carnegie Mellon University 4,112

6 University of Michigan--Ann Arbor 3,247

7 Purdue University--West Lafayette 3,428

8 Georgia Institute of Technology 4,252

9 University of California--San Diego (Jacobs) 3,141

10 University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign 3,736

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering...

jkqwzsoo• 6 years ago

These are graduate school enrollment numbers. Without breaking down CS/EE versus most other engineering disciplines, are MS/PhDs the "primary" talent source for the tech industry?

For comparison, GATech claims 61% of their students get engineering degrees and an enrollment of 14,142, thus ~8,626 undergraduate engineering students.

https://coe.gatech.edu/about/facts-rankings

Other school's engineering enrollment:

UT Austin claims 6,003 undergraduate and 2,101 graduate.

https://www.engr.utexas.edu/about/facts-and-rankings/program...

Berkeley claims 3,746 undergraduates and 2,357 graduates.

https://engineering.berkeley.edu/about/facts-and-figures/

MIT claims 2,451 undergraduates.

https://engineering.mit.edu/about/facts-and-figures/

Stanford claims 1570 undergraduate and 3603 graduate.

https://registrar.stanford.edu/everyone/enrollment-statistic...

I think the parent comment is correct to say there are many larger engineering schools than MIT and Stanford.

WalterBright3• 6 years ago

Correction: swap #1 with #4

ericmay• 6 years ago

Yep. A lot of the Big Ten schools along with universities like Washington, Texas, Florida, etc. have been the drivers in overall production of engineers.

I think what they probably meant talent pools for some companies in the tech industry, or something similar.

Barrin92• 6 years ago

Not to mention the extremely large foreign born workforce who usually also obtain significant education at home.

akhilcacharya3• 6 years ago

Yeah, it's honestly insulting copy, and ignores other North American schools like Waterloo that make up a disproportionate part of big tech.

Upvoter333• 6 years ago

(should have included all the great Canadian universities in the list too, my apologies ... not that I included all the great US universities)

908B64B197• 6 years ago

I had to lookup the school. Maybe it's better known in some regional markets? It's behind a few names I was familiar with in Canada. [0]

[0] https://cwur.org/2019-2020.php

mav3rick2• 6 years ago

NCSU isn't on this list regardless.

jchiu1106• 6 years ago

And CMU

agotterer• 6 years ago

I came to the comments say the same thing. I’ve hired and worked with many engineers and the overwhelming majority did not attend MIT or Stanford. Some of the best didn’t attend college at all!

Avicebron2• 6 years ago

In your experience how do you filter candidates without a degree? Portfolio? Do you review their code?

sharadov• 6 years ago

Laughable, because a large number of tech workers in SV are from India, and a large percentage get their undergrad degrees in India, most come here for Masters degrees, but a majority go to engineering schools all over the US.

teleforce• 6 years ago

This. Anecdotally one Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) senior Professor told me that normally the best achievers of their undergraduate students go to US for work or further studies after graduation, the middle achievers work in India and the bottom achievers mostly continue their study at IIT with India govt's sponsorship. According to him even the bottom achievers are actually still good students since they graduated from IIT.

Since there are currently 23 IITs, the numbers that go to US (and SV) every year can be very significant. The long term effect of this phenomenon can be observed from the increasing number of US (and SV) tech companies CEOs are from India education background.

foobiekr• 6 years ago

They are the leading bodies for taking credit for it, however.

dontbenebby• 6 years ago

the majority is by far from much larger, public schools, like Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, etc.

These schools are very good btw. Berkeley is tied with Stanford for example, UI #5, Washington #6, UT is #10.

Conversely Harvard is ranked #15, but that's the things about rankings: they're often used to prune out people who don't "know someone", and when the metrics do not match someone's perceived "elite" status, they are ignored.

All of the schools you mention are attended by elites and commoners, produce talented people and untalented people, jerks and kind folks, and all the permutations of that.

I just wish we'd focus more on competent and kind, and less on connections or wealth - companies that do this will prosper IMHO, and companies that rant about "meritocracy" will wither as they drive away half the population.

Women are just as capable of coding well - creating a toxic culture is reducing your talent pool by half, something people obsessed with "facts and logic" should think more about. Insisting on "elite" schools when the good ones are public will also harm you long term if you're doing more cutting edge stuff.

tehabe• 6 years ago

I remember a story that Leland Stanford asked what is needed to found a university and the answer was 200 million dollars. What they didn't tell him, that it also takes 200 hundred years.

Universities are a longterm project, if a university is good or not, is something you don't really realise while you are there but when you are finished and try to use your knowledge.

ghaff12• 6 years ago

I'll give you an example. MIT was founded in 1861. OK. Sorta bad timing. (Two days after it was chartered, the Civil War broke out.)

But even after it got going and moved to its Cambridge campus in 1916 (significantly funded by George Eastman--as in Eastman Kodak), it didn't really become known as a premier institution until WWII.

pvg• 6 years ago

Stanford isn't 200 years old, neither is Berkeley. Many UC campuses are a lot younger, UCSC was founded in 1965.

ghaff12• 6 years ago

Even in the East a lot of universities aren't that old. A lot of well known institutions postdate the Civil War and those aren't 200 years old yet.

kyawzazaw3• 6 years ago

years alone mean nothing too.

See example: https://www.centre.edu/bicentennial/

duxup2• 6 years ago

The federal government pay cap in 2019 was $166,500....

These folks are going to go to this university that is better than Stanford and MIT (let's assume this mammoth task happens) and then eschew working for big tech paychecks in favor of working for the government?

kxyvr2• 6 years ago

That is not entirely true, but the devil is in the details. As an example, the Federal government employs thousands of physicians at the VA and, depending on specialty, they are paid significantly more than this. Last time I checked, they capped out at $400k:

https://www.va.gov/OHRM/Pay/2020/PhysicianDentist/PayTables_...

Anyway, the point is that the federal government can and does pay significantly more than the GS pay scale to people who are federal employees and enjoy federal pensions. Whether or not the feds will choose to pay that to those who work in technology remains to be seen.

duxup2• 6 years ago

I remember a couple departments (including the NSA) complaining about the federal cap when it came to some IT projects, so I'm not sure it is a sure deal to get past that cap.

The VA is a whole other land of bureaucracy that plays by its own rules.

codekansas• 6 years ago

The naming, "US Digital Service Academy", seems to suggest that it will be tied to the US Digital Service - which would be great. I think that might be the only government organization that I would actually be excited about working for.

Side note, I really hope the tour-of-duty model becomes more popular with techies, and more encouraged by employers. I can see it having numerous bidirectional benefits

hinkley• 6 years ago

Maybe I'm just a bitter pessimist, but I don't relish the idea of Schmidt telling more people how to think.

Animats• 6 years ago

Who's supposed to fund this? Is Schmidt putting up the money himself?

Is this to be a real college, with accreditation, or something like "Singularity University" or Udacity or DeVry?

jeffreyrogers2• 6 years ago

I believe it is supposed to be a real college. I've seen it mentioned a few other places informally and that was the impression I got.

sdinsn• 6 years ago

Who's supposed to fund this?

The government- Schmidt is making a recommendation to Congress.

Is this to be a real college, with accreditation

Yes

jeffreyrogers2• 6 years ago

Peter Thiel was thinking about starting a university at some point too. He decided not to because it was too hard. Seems like it could be a great idea though. Government at all levels in the US has a lot of problems and getting smart, reform-minded people into it would hopefully help correcting that.

jb775• 6 years ago

would ideally produce graduates imbued with a sense of government duty.

I'm not sure this is the best selling point to attract a young & diverse student body, given current world events.

pmorici• 6 years ago

Maybe this article is missing some important details but I don't see how having a special university is going to help the problem of getting more technical talent into government work.

There are already tons of government scholarship programs with strings attached in the form of post graduation service requirements and other hiring funnels that bring in new graduates. The government's problem isn't hiring new grads it's keeping those people once they get a few years experience. The biggest drain is probably government contracting companies who often offer literally twice the salary for the same work. Combine that with the soul sucking aspects that you would find at any large company and you have the perfect recipe for not being able to recruit and retain qualified mid career people.

It's hard to imagine how any amount of indoctrination in the ideals of public service at a special school will overcome those things without something else changing.

habosa• 6 years ago

Eric is one of the most accomplished leaders in tech but also one of the most overconfident and out of touch. So this could really go either way.

zazerbayev• 6 years ago

I think this is a great idea.

You must ask yourself why the government is able to retain word-class managers and jurists despite stiff competition from the private sector. James Comey was an executive at the world's largest hedge fund, why did he quit for a government job where he was making 100x less? Any federal judge could've made a fortune in corporate law, why didn't they choose to? Because there is a sense of prestige and national duty about their posts. Creating a similar status for technologists in government would go a long way towards recruiting and retaining top talent.

If we want to convince people that being a government engineer is worthwhile and respected, starting with students seems reasonable.

zjaffee4• 6 years ago

I think it's more complicated than that, all of these roles come with substantial amounts of near unilateral executive power that can impact the way the country is run for decades to come.

Even all of the existing US government tech posts like the USDS and 18F are ultimately there purely to service the needs of a bureaucratic agency and their particular management.

For a technology specific role to have the same level of prestige as someone on the federal bench or leading the FBI, they'd need to be giving them unilateral regulatory powers over the broader technology industry in the country.

math_and_stuff• 6 years ago

Sounds a lot like the Defense Innovation Board and National Security Commission on AI.

wslack4• 6 years ago

I'd just push back - technology is a tool to accomplish the missions of government.

The positions that run those missions - enforcing the law, ruling on the law, running Medicare, etc etc - should be more prestigious. That said, if the government wants to have prestigious technical work, it should be more open to taking big swings (in an agile way) on hard problems, but that requires investment and taking risks.

dumbfoundded2• 6 years ago

Why? For some the reasons you list are certainly it. For many more, it's the revolving door. You make money in private industry, change the legal or regulatory structure and then go back to private industry to make even more.

Here's a database: https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/

elsewhen• 6 years ago

My understanding is that you can sell stock (that might pose a conflict of interest) tax-free when you take a government role. I presume that a hedge fund manager such as James Comey would have significant unrealized capital gains that he could sell prior to taking his government position.

Gary Cohn, Trump's chief economic advisor did exactly this[0].

"The chief economic adviser was required to sell his Goldman Sachs shares -- and he did so tax-free and with perfect timing"

[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-rich-gary-cohn-got-even-...

nickgrosvenor• 6 years ago

Good for him

selfishgene2• 6 years ago

My favorite quote is at the end:

"Per the report, the Digital Service Academy would serve as a third reservoir for the best and brightest technology workers, but one that would ideally produce graduates imbued with a sense of government duty."

... because places like MIT and Stanford sure as hell don't!

It looks like Schmidt just wants the next generation of students to forgo their dreams of starting the next Google.

I think a better idea to help this country stay competitive is for companies like Google to stop offshoring their operations ... and pay their goddamn taxes like the rest of us.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/31/21044662/google-end-tax-...

https://fortune.com/2019/12/06/big-tech-taxes-google-faceboo...

dumbfoundded2• 6 years ago

I can't speak for Stanford but MIT is extremely closely tied with the federal government. The Lincoln Lab for instance gets ~$1B/year from the Defense Department. The only reason MIT became a well known institution at all is because of its ties to the military.

selfishgene2• 6 years ago

MIT became a rich institution because of its ties to the military.

Lincoln Laboratory is often called a "PhD graveyard" for good reason: it's where reject academics who were denied tenure go to die.

sebastianconcpt2• 6 years ago

1. What guarantees does it offer for ideology neutrality? 2. What guarantees does it offer for the diversity of ideas? 3. What guarantees does it offer for excluding censorship of the expression of thought as a measurable true defense of freedom of thought and expression?

sebastianconcpt2• 6 years ago

What would be valid reasons for the previous comment to be just silently downvoted?

stupendousyappi• 6 years ago

The biggest challenge in recruiting technical talent to the government is the GS payscale. This program is being recommended to Congress, so I assume it's an attempt to indirectly increase compensation by offering free tuition to people who commit to government employment- it also is likely attempting to target college age kids, who could accept government payscales more easily than someone who already works in the private sector and has gotten used to higher compensation. Schmidt is no dummy, and I expect that this would work, but it's still a hack around the fundamental problem of IT compensation scales that are roughly 50% of private sector levels.

A more straightforward solution would be to just create a new payscale (say, the Executive Technical Service) for IT professionals and other technical domains where federal compensation lags the private sector. The Senior Executive Service (the payscale for senior leadership like department and agency executives, including most political appointees) has about 8000 members- if you gave this system twice as many people and paid them all $100k more than the GS system would, you'd increase the federal budget by about $1.6 billion a year, or 0.04% of the 2019 budget, almost all of which you'd recover anyway by replacing IT contractors who generally cost the government between $250k and $350k each a year. Unfortunately, this solution would really piss off the big federal contractors, who would heavily lobby against it, which is why it doesn't happen even though more reasonable payscales have been found for federal doctors and lawyers.

thephyber6• 6 years ago

The elephant in the room when talking about making government work more like startups:

We don't allow governments to fail (easily) but startups fail frequently and we acknowledge that both bankruptcy and team failure leads to knowledge that is rare to gather without actually experiencing the failure.

I'm not advocating for anything in particular except to acknowledge this fact.

WalterBright3• 6 years ago

one that would ideally produce graduates imbued with a sense of government duty.

I wonder how they plan to do that.

j45• 6 years ago

This likely will prove to be much bigger news than many anticipate today.

Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

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