Canadian University Puts Tech Whiz Kids in 'Dormcubator'

jades writes "The University of Waterloo (Canada), sometimes billed as the 'MIT of the North' is establishing a residence 'incubator'. Meant to challenge 70 of their very top students in the tech and business fields, students will live together and work on 'the future of mobile communications, the web and digital media'. It's called 'VeloCity', and it launches in Fall 2008 after renovations are completed this summer."

bs

[theheadlessrabbit]

I have friends who go to The U of Waterloo, and not one has EVER called that school "the MIT of the North"

when asked, "how's your University", most of them just shrug and say "meh, it's alright, its a University."

MIT of the North? who said that? the Marketing department for Waterloo?

Waterloo vs U of T

[florescent_beige]

Waterloo has always fancied itself an industry supplier of productive bodies. My brother the EE went there and benefited from their work-term model. He got lots of practical experience which helped him land a job, although he took longer to get his degree than me.

I did an ME at the U of T. (Funny that the article calls Waterloo "MIT North", because U of T profs liked to call MIT "U of T South". Which is all very embarrassing, like stop with the MIT comparisons for heck's sake.)

The problem I have with this Velocity thing is: who pays and who benefits? Seems to me a chunk of everyone's tuition will go toward it, while only some will be in a position to get in. And those who can get in will be the ones who can deal with the extra work load.

In a perfect world, it would be the more clever who could handle the added work. In reality, it is the ones who have external support, like whose parents live not far away, or who come from richer families, that can focus on the work. The poor slobs who have 2 pair of pants for 4 years and who eat leftover mac & cheese for 5 days in a row wouldn't fit in.

I have no problem with elitism, it's a central component of hereditary capitalism, our beloved system. But not when the winners are being subsidized by the losers, that just strikes me as wrong.

I'm obviously biased, but I like the U of T approach: classical. Give everyone the same education and chuck them all into the market and let life sort them out. I hate the idea of university admins having the power to pick winners.

Very smart

[WindBourne]

I have been trying to get the state of Colorado to offer various X prizes for needs of the state. For example, one of the suggestions was to come up with a means of stopping Pine beetles, which are devastating literally 100 of millions worth of lodge pole and other pines. I figured that ppl, roughly students, would go into the woods and look for lodge pole trees that appeared to survive the beetles. Once they do that, they could then look for what is different. What is amazing is that now a company in Mass (from MIT), has a way to stop them. They found it by following the method that I suggested. It appears that Colorado will spend somewhere between 10-100 millions to save just a fraction of the lodgepole pines. I suspect that other states will spend similar amounts or more.

All in all, Gov. CAN help fund ideas. The Canadian approach will help lead to companies with loads of ideas AND ppl to try and incubate them. My suggestion would only have costs iff an idea was worthy. Hopefully more universities will pick up the idea of integrating ppl, rather than separating them (and perhaps offer incentives).

Re:MIT of the North

[chronosan]

Waterloo is only ONE degree north of Cambridge, and not too far west. On a global scale, they're in the same place.

Re:Waterloo vs U of T

[Dulcise]

Mod perant up.
While this may benefit a select few, those that were already achieving well, those that aren't doing so well now have less places to look for good study practice, which I have found (at least on me) rubs off.

When you're working with people who party all the time, you tend to work less, when you are with people who study more, you study more. So now the struggling student has even less of a work atmosphere than before, and the students that don't need more of a work atmosphere and are doing fine are being skimmed off to be in one.

Re:Poor kids

[PopeRatzo]

Poor kids is right.

The ones that don't get rich will commit suicide. This project is the academic equivalent of cockfighting.

Re:bs

[Francis]

I have friends who go to The U of Waterloo, and not one has EVER called that school "the MIT of the North"

when asked, "how's your University", most of them just shrug and say "meh, it's alright, its a University."

You're right on the first point, noone ever calls UW the "MIT of the North". As far as being just another university though, I'd have to disagree. I think UW is one of the strongest technical universities in the world. One of the things they like to brag about at UW is their results in the world ACM programming contest. (For reference, UW placed ahead of MIT 10 years in the last 15.) More anecdotally, having worked with graduates from all around the world, I'd really have to say that UW tends to produce more effective software engineers than other schools.

I can see how your friends might have mixed feelings about the place though - the administration can treat people quite poorly, and life as an undergrad can be stressful. As an alumni, I'm glad to have gone through it, and I'm glad not to be there :)

As for the original story, I'm glad to see UW doing something like this. Developing UW spinoff companies wasn't something that most of us considered, but this could really encourage that sort of thing. I think that's good for the school and the economy in the long term.

Re:bs

[TheRaven64]

Speaking as someone in a Computer Science department in the UK, I'd put Waterloo near the top in terms of perceived reputation internationally (as would my head of department, who I discussed the university with a couple of weeks ago in reference to some historical parallels). That said, I'd put MIT in the same league as Cambridge for computer science - did some really great stuff a few decades ago, a few interesting things recently, but survives mostly on inherited reputation and marketing these days.