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MIT Media Lab Tightens Its Belt
Forbes Magazine has this story about the MIT Media Laboratory's current "burn rate" problem. It seems that the Media Lab is feeling the same big draft at its posterior that dot-com companies felt last year after years of go-go growth and seemingly unlimited funding. The Media Lab is particularly sensitive to this downturn due to its heavy reliance on corporate sponsorship, as well as its fondness for unconventional, even eccentric, research. Items that will no longer receive funding according to a January 5th internal E-mail from the Lab's Executive Director Walter Bender: cellular telephones, first-class air travel, food at internal Lab meetings, and furniture. Other more serious cutbacks for the Lab include layoffs for 29 staff members and reduced funding for students, including salaries for "Undergraduate Research Opportunities" (UROP) positions. The Media Lab had previously paid such positions $8.75 and up in order to remain competitive with industry offers that even not-yet-graduated students were receiving.
I agree it must be a typo - undergrads can make $8.75/hour making copies in the admissions office. No way is that even clos to competitive with the other offers these guys were getting.
I'm not sympathetic to edu's that want a free ride for all sorts of worthless research. It's especially bad when they start consorting with companies for all sort of bennies that have nothing to do with *meaningful* research. This not only diverts them from more meaningful activity, but it propagates the sort of economic bloat that gets passed on to consumers and/or taxpayers, directly and indirectly.
Maybe we'll start seeing some more great things from MIT (and other schools) as the economy forces them to focus on their core goals again.
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First Class tix, cell phones...all justifiable because so much irreplaceable work has come out of the Media Lab. Hold on, let me think of some...uhhhh...ummmmm...I know, lots of articles about themselves in Wired!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
sorry but paying cellphone time for anyone is pretty stupid unless they are the on-call administrator. same goes for first class travel or the catered meetings. (bring a coke and a twinkie if you're hungry, the rest of us have to buy our own lunch!)
The problems I saw was excessive spending for un-important things thus taking funds away from many important projects.... gluttony at it's finest.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Agreed, but it's short sighted to care what you get paid as an intern. The long term economics of having the phrase "MIT Media Lab" on your C.V. far outweighs the difference between $5.15 and hour and $20 and hour over the course of an internship.
These "kids" are cutting edge innovators.
No, they're "kids". The cutting edge innovators are the professors and research fellows.
I mean, I myself am right now trying very hard to get a job at another Boston area university, and while I'm really looking forward to it, it's going to be a pretty significant paycut from the job I got laid off from last fall. I'm choosing to go for it because my fiance also works, and between us we think we'll be able to cover the bills & mortgage, put a little aside, and not have to tighten our belts that badly.
But not everyone can do that. Sometimes it can come to a choice between an intellectually stimulating but low paying job, or a more monotonous one that will be able to pay the bills, and you can't have a say in the matter. (For an example, take a look at the protests over Harvard employees wanting to get a better "living wage" over the past few months.) It's unfortunate that the Media Lab effectively imposes this decision on their employees, and I wouldn't be surprised if their attrition rate is pretty high as a result of it.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Like nomadic, who replied above, I also suffered through a public university. In my case, the computer science program was barely able to afford the basics. This is in Minnesota, USA which is one of the most highly taxed regions of the country and yet, we could barely afford the basics. I paid my own tuition, I paid for my own meals, I paid my own room and board, and I worked the $4.25/hour jobs to do it. I emerged from school with much less debt than my coastal peers and, for the most part, with much more willingness to bust my ass to succeed.
To me, that is valuable. Having a role in remeasuring Mt. Everst, Legos products, and other commercial innovations is interesting to be sure. However, if we don't afford our students a bit of hardship, then how are they to have enough character to make real contributions to the world and not just invent the next profit margin gimmick? MIT may have done some important things in the past (and are probably doing so right now in some ways), but it didn't do those because they had every convenience and plush toy available to them. Why should that be the case now? If I provide all those extras, who am I going to attract? Will I attract those with an interest in being among the elite? Or will I attract those with an interest in being merely comfortable? If I simply provide an education with a reputation for producing lean and mean technologists, who will I attract? I will attract those who are motivated to become better.
As for professors, I do not begrudge any professor their salary. They put up with way too much for the likes of me to badmouth them. But there's a limit there too.
Excessive comfort does not promote real innovation.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Furthermore, while it may be true that the Media Lab is more frivolous than, say, LCS, it still outputs some truly great things - such as, as others have pointed out, LEGO Mindstorms. For more, check out their patents list.
Of course, there are the ideas that are... well, harebrained. The "smart" oven mitt, for example, that tells you if an object you touch is hot. Let me see, I'll go put on my oven mitt to take something out of a heated oven... well goddamn, it's hot. Better not touch it.
Maybe some ideas are better left as ideas. :)
-Themis