Buy College Education, Get Free iBook

kraksmoka writes ""The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about how Saint Leo University in Florida is offering an iBook laptop to every incoming residential student and full-time faculty member. '... the draw of the iBooks has encouraged some of the more than 1,700 students at the university's main campus who would otherwise commute to live in dormitories, which makes the program a success in the university vice president's eyes.'" The students do not keep the computers, unless they finish two years in the honors program.

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Not economical.

[Patik]

The reason people commute is to save the >$5000 cost of room and board. Why would they trade that savings in for a $2000 laptop that they can't even keep? One would be much better off buying their own iBook and commuting -- total savings of $3000, rather than plunking down $3000 ($5000 room/board minus laptop) for the 'rental' of an iBook.

Re:Not economical.

[dbarclay10]

Your math assumes that by commuting, they spend absolutely no money on room and board.

I suppose a few of the students will be living with their parents, but they'll still have to pay for gas and vehicle maintenance.

For the rest of them, have you thought that maybe $5000-$1000(laptop) is *less* than what they'd pay if they're commuting? $4000 is a pretty good deal (to a lot of people) for room, board, not having to pay nearly as much for gas, and negligible vehicle maintenance costs.

Re:Microsoft copy

[gsfprez]

>I'd like to see this program offer a choice. Do you want a MacOS, M$, or some flavor of unix on your free laptop?

Yes. That's what they did.

They gave them a machine that does MacOS, M$, or some flavor of unix on your free laptop.

doofus.

Great idea... here's why:

[dagg]

This seems like a really good deal for Saint Leo University:

• Many students will not follow all the rules and will have to give the laptop back.
• After two years, the laptops will be monetarily worthless (definitely after four years). So why not just let the students keep them?
• I wonder if they're getting a tax writeoff? They could definitely save on taxes if they do it right.
• Obviously is getting them a lot of publicity.

--
Yersex of students

great motivators for my research students

[call -151]

I got a bunch of iBooks (for myself and grant-supported research students who are writing code for some of my projects) and the machines are great. We can move source code from there to our Beowulf clusters no problem, the students love them, and they were $1100 a year ago for the most recent batch (ed pricing, the ed pricing on Dell laptops was $1000 and that was for a clunker.) They are even cheaper now. Our `killer apps' are vi and gcc, basically, and under OS X stuff works like they expect it to, from their Unix experience, pretty much.

I've been able to recruit strong research students by giving them iBooks as well as a decent stipend, and Airport works so well that it's saved me the trouble of worrying about wiring the lab they use and they love using Airport all over the place. I've got some dedicated and loyal students who are doing lots of cool things and being able to give them good machines is definitely responsible for part of that.

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Re:Microsoft copy

[IamTheRealMike]

Yes. That's what they did.

No, they did not. Being able to use an emulator is not "giving them choice". What if they want to, golly gosh, play games?

Real choice would have involved them going to the students, individually and saying "What do you want? This is what we can afford". Some would have said Macs. Some wouldn't (surprise, Windows is still quite popular). Better still, just give them educational discount vouchers that they can spend on computers, books, gym membership, extra courses, whatever they like as long as it's educational.

Saying this is choice because you can get an emulator is ridiculous - it's a well known axiom that any computer is capable of emulating almost any other (within hardware limits). It doesn't mean they can do it well, or that it's something you'd want to do.