[peterzakin]

Princeton's the same way. Tremendous amount of engineering talent and we even benefit from relative proximity to New York, and yet the prevailing campus culture pushes students towards finance and consulting.

How can that culture change? I can't say for sure, but my hypothesis is that a hacker culture already exists at Princeton; it's just hidden and untapped. At the very least these two things could help a university with an untapped hacker culture:

1. a hacker house, or at least some defined space to code along like-minded kids, even if that is nothing more than a dorm room.

2. student-driven cs curriculum. Princeton's CS program like Cornell's (i'm taking your word for it) is heavily theory based. There is i believe only one course on web development. In other departments, students not infrequently campaign for new classes. I wonder what effect an iphone development class (for the sake of an example) would have on the campus culture?