I don't think you have to change universities to make people start startups. Once word spreads among hackers that it works, more will.
What I'd ask is: what could you teach in universities that will help people later in startups? There are some interesting answers to that. One thing engineering schools could do right now is teach more product design, instead of assuming their graduates will all go off to work in big companies as mere implementors.
One thing that I think universities could change is to make freshman year more than a rehash of high school calc and physics, albeit at a more involved level. This is a recipe for extinguishing imagination.
Most high schools in the USA are so bad that freshman year is mainly remedial. Actually, most high schools in the USA are so bad that the entirety of college is remedial.
Indeed. There should be a a separation either at admissions or with honors classes for kids that can do more. Universities typically aren't nearly as bad as high schools with this.
Agreed. In terms of Computer Science, I believe that every student should at least be given a mandatory introduction on Human Computer Interaction. I've come across many stellar engineers who are passionate about producing beautiful code, but produce sparse, uninteresting UI's - why should we not also be passionate about producing beautiful, elegant user interfaces?
Even as implementors, most people don't work on large systems while in universities. It isn't so much learning tools to handle these systems but learning why best practices are good to follow.
What I'd ask is: what could you teach in universities that will help people later in startups? There are some interesting answers to that. One thing engineering schools could do right now is teach more product design, instead of assuming their graduates will all go off to work in big companies as mere implementors.