Cornell's business-focused NYC tech campus is opening to its first class of students. Cornell, which won a bid against Columbia, NYU, and others in 2011 to build a New York campus, has brought in its first "beta" class of eight students for a one-year Master of Engineering degree in computer science. The class will study at a temporary campus at Google's Chelsea office; students will spend Monday through Thursday in class and spend Friday on "Entrepreneurial Life" workshops, meant to provide a boost to startup-minded students and New York's tech industry in general. Students will complete a master's project with a "real-world" advisor from a company and non-profit as part of their program.

Deborah Estrin — who was announced as the first tech campus professor in mid-2012 — made it clear earlier that entrepreneurialism would be a focus of the school, saying that outside the university, "if somebody can't build a business model around what you do, it won't happen." After the first, smaller class enters, the campus will expand its academic programs further into electrical and computer engineering, information science, and operations research and information engineering. In 2017, the program will also move from its current Chelsea location to a permanent campus on Roosevelt Island, seen in the concept art above.