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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.
These "kids" are cutting edge innovators.
No, they're "kids". The cutting edge innovators are the professors and research fellows.
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!