The faculty brain trust is available free of charge, too. Mike Phelps, a senior accounting major at Brigham Young University , approached Prof. Steve Glover several times after lectures and during office hours for advice on how to make financial projections, how to keep books, and how to decide on salary levels for new workers. Phelps envisions a senior year with plenty of all-nighters. But he estimates that his salary next year will cover tuition, housing, and living expenses for himself and his wife and newborn baby. Students themselves are launching incubators and venture-capital firms that specialize in developing their peers' nascent companies.
Some undergrads drop out or take a semester off.
The thought crossed Tiffany Farriss's mind once Palantir.net, the Web development firm that she started with her boyfriend, pushed her average workweek at Northwestern past the 90-hour mark. The math and classics major decided instead to quit dorm government, give up her astrophysics lab research, and sleep only three to four hours a night. Ill. The for-profit problem. Budding entrepreneurs do face a major logistical problem when they start out, as the University of Chicago 's Laura Bates found out last winter. Universities are nonprofit institutions, and their students legally cannot operate for-profit businesses on the campus network.