UIUC grad here. Pretty sure I was the author&#x27;s TA at one point too :)<p>All of these programs and events are a huge step in the right direction.  I personally did my best to even help some of these programs grow, particularly iFoundry and the group that eventually became Hack Illinois.  But the biggest challenge I found was bridging the chasm between this hacker&#x2F;entrepreneur culture and the existing academic&#x2F;research culture.<p>As a premier research university, the UIUC engineering curriculum is heavily focused on the theoretical.  In my years there, I really had to go out of my way to obtain some hands-on learning experiences.  Those are so important for breeding a hacker&#x2F;entrepreneur culture.  It&#x27;s how you learn to work with real-world constraints, how to network and collaborate, and how to fail well.  A textbook and a Powerpoint lecture just can&#x27;t teach that.<p>So the question I pose, to the author and to the readers, is this:  How do we change the way students are taught?