For a while now, the Liquid Rocket Initiative has been looking for a permanent workspace to store its test stand trailer. It has turned out to be really tough. Why? On the surface level, it’s because there simply isn’t enough space on campus. But if you dig deeper, a more complex narrative begins to unfold. It is my belief that the reason why it is so difficult for RSOs to find space on campus is that the university has a cynical outlook on students’ potential. Students’ actions reinforce this point of view.
Universities are risk-averse institutions by nature. Their primary objective is to continue themselves into the far future. By not taking risks, such as liability for the actions of their students, universities can protect themselves from forces that could lead to their dissolution. So, when a student team comes along and says that it’s going to do something really hard, such as building a rocket engine, how does the university respond? It responds with doubt. Questions such as “who is your faculty advisor?” or “have you spoken with the risk assessment office?” are frequent. In my experience, students are rarely told, “wow, that’s a really cool idea. Let’s see how we can make it happen.” Why is this? I think it’s because the UIUC faculty have seen students with ambitious ideas 100 times, and 99 of them didn’t come to fruition. What feels to the students like a new environment full of opportunities feels to professors like the same old day-to-day mundanity, another day at work. Students with big ideas are tolerated, but rarely are they supported, because the professors have been burned to many times. Big ideas are more likely to fail. So the university supports students with small ambitions—the students who want to “do well,” not the students who want to become the next Elon Musk. It is a lot easier (and less risky) to get good grades than it is to build a liquid propellant rocket.
When was the last time that a team of undergraduates at UIUC did something unprecedented? Everyone talks the talk, saying how they’re going to build this or that crazy project, but no one executes! People in the university administration are sick and tired of hearing students on the front end of the Dunning-Krueger curve talk about their grand ambitions. They would rather put their money where there is a greater likelihood that they make a return on their investments. Meanwhile, students continue to complain about how their groups are undersupported. Since so many have failed to achieve their goals, the university has no reason to believe that helping these groups will improve its position.
This leaves us with a chicken-and-egg problem. Student teams need resources to complete their projects, and encouragement when they hit an obstacle. But the university does not provide the funding the student teams need, nor do professors wish to invest their time into being a faculty advisor for a student team that is unlikely to succeed. They’ve been burned too many times, they “know better” now. Students are both surprised and dismayed when they encounter this environment, and they try to change it by being “the one” who actually succeeds. When they ultimately fail, the university’s cynical conception of such efforts is strengthened.
Many people who work at the university don’t believe that students genuinely care about what they are doing. Most students don’t. It’s easy to start a project, but many don’t have anything to keep their skin in the game when it gets hard—their livelihoods don’t depend on it. Therefore, no real progress (which I define as solving hard problems) is made. It is for this reason that the University prefers to fund teams that have existed for a long time—a safe strategy, but not one that gives students the ability to solve new problems.
Here are some ways we could shift this dynamic:
Fund students who have skin in the game
The big problem with student organizations is that there are no real consequences if you just phase out of reality. No one’s going to come after you if you spend $10,000 of the department’s money on a project that only ends up failing. Most students participate in RSOs only to get to the next step in their career, they have little reason to complete the project on time or on budget. The department could get around this warped incentive structure by funding students who have demonstrated some sort of personal sacrifice for the project they are working on. Someone who has invested a sizeable amount of their own money and time into a project is far more likely to succeed since failure would have personal consequences.
Work with ambitious students to create a long-term plan for their project
Many student teams aspire to do great things but don’t think definitely about what it will actually take to achieve them. This kind of thinking should happen at the beginning of a project. At the beginning of such an endeavor, having a good mentor can make all the difference.
Lots of student teams will come up with an idea and want to pursue it because it is “cool.” But for something as complex as building a liquid rocket engine, this level of motivation is insufficient. Hard projects require that one digs deeper. What if, instead of cynicism, a mentor responded to a big idea with a genuine, non-judgmental, “Why do you want to work on this problem in particular?” or “Why is this problem important to you?” Establishing how success would be personally meaningful is a great way to increase the chances of it happening.
“I’m going to build a rocket.” Meh.
“I’m going to build a rocket because I want to connect students with the spirit of space exploration, and to inspire others to take on hard challenges.” HELL YEAH!
Encourage student teams with grand ambitions to start small and scale rapidly
A proof of concept is a valuable thing. You can have big plans, but if you have no path to get there, you’re just talking. Things that are seemingly impossible can be achieved in a short timeframe by channeling exponential growth. Exponential growth isn’t flashy at first, but it eventually goes vertical. The most successful student teams (and companies) I’ve seen didn’t reinvent the wheel. They started with a small concept, learned from it, and then scaled up. This is how great things are achieved.
Relations between the university and student groups are frequently strained. It’s not clear to me that it needs to be this way. Student teams need to demonstrate to the University that they can provide value to it, while the University needs to have faith in its students and give them the structure they need to succeed with their ambitious ideas. Ambitious people tend to sound naïve at first, but the people who change the world are the ones who aren’t afraid to test their naïve assumptions about it. It’s the responsibility of the University of Illinois to provide students with a framework in which they can do so.