[MichiganMat]

This is a somewhat interesting discussion. I graduated from U of M (which we all know kicks the crap out of CalTech) with a Computer Engineering degree. Now, when I was in school, it seemed that a lot of what we were learning was nothing more than high-end trade school skills. Kinda like being a plumber or electrician, but with code and signals.

"But where is the creativity!!@#%!# Why can't we build cool stuff? This place is for suckas!"

Without fundamentals, your creativity is can only go so far. The same is true in music and in writing IMO. I've found that Im far more creative and much more able to execute on those ideas now that I have the foundations to back it up.

Im of the opinion that school is work, the rest is play. Thats why I formed the Student Project Lab at U of M and built a place for students to come in and build all the wacky stuff they couldn't do in their dormrooms. And even with that amazing resource we only had a handful of kids who came in and used it.

As for MIT, they have some pretty kickass competitions for their students from what I've heard, and some classes that are purely imaginative and creativity based. Very cool stuff happening over there. U of M had a video games course where students were going wild with their ideas, none of which could have happened if they hadn't spent the previous 4 years sorting data, learning algorithms, and doing matrix mathmatics.