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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.
They demand two years work for a $1,500 computer? Shit, I could make enough to buy one working at McDonald's for just a couple of months!
Education? What? I'm missing something? Huh?
Apple should jump on this as a marketing tool but spin it the other way: Buy an iBook, get a scholarship to the third-rate college of your choice!
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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 ($5000 room/board minus laptop) for the 'rental' of an iBook.
The students do not keep the computers, unless they finish two years in the honors program.
Wow, at my old college, they are forcing all the engineers to have laptops (even have a used laptops for sale), but you have to buy them. And even if they supplied them, giving them away is -huge-. Think about it. If you get an iBook for free, its equivalent to going to school for a free semester...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Call me cynical, but: How much did the tuition increase to pay for this? For some reason, tuition wasn't mentioned... What's the rate of theft on campus? Now with tuition and "student fees", they can pay both a Mac and a Microsoft tax. Great. Any what does any of this have to do with receiving a higher education?
Look how they copy Microsoft's tactic of giving away computers with their OS.
Give students your OS, get them convinced that it's the only way a computer should work, and you've got a loyal userbase that *should* continue to use your OS and buy upgrades from you, instead of your competitors.
I'd like to see this program offer a choice. Do you want a MacOS, M$, or some flavor of unix on your free laptop?
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I wish they had this program way back when I was in college. I lived on the computer science floor and our benefit was dial-up access to the mainframe.
/dream sequence
dream sequence
Me talking to my grandkids. Ah, you kids don't know how good you have it. Why, when I was your age TV was two-dimensional in black and white. And we only had four channels and no remote control. And we were glad to have them. Heck, if we wanted to change the channel we had to walk two miles, through ten feet of snow, barefoot.
I wouldn't say I'm a bad gambler but the last time I went to Vegas I even lost a buck on the soda machine.
They don't exactly have a Masters in Business. How can you expect them to do such complex addition and subtraction with only a puny high school diploma?
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You are at the end of the post. To the north lies the post.
There is a sig here.
and i am convinced that my new iBook 800 with combo drive is the best Mac i've ever owned. It took about 2 days for me to belive that.
(PB 100, Duo 230, 280c, 180c, 520c, 660AV, 7500, G4/450, and TiBook 550 if you really care to know)
It is cheap (as in beer), its fast, its rock solid construction, its got a sexy bright screen, its got very good wireless coverage, its light (in grams), it has every port i could ever want, and its simple in design which doesn't lend itself to breakage of parts (like my work's Thinkpad with now broken USB door and broken PCCard buttons)
so what?
This is a great plan and gives students a great leg up with the ultimate college computer. I wish that i had had the opportunity 12 years ago when i went to college to get a PowerBook 100 (included with tution price).
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
but it doesn't seem to be attracting the brightest students. Since they are really just *lending* the ibooks to the residents, they can keep recycling them each year. Remember the original toilet seat ibook? Even if some students do complete the honors program and keep the ibooks, that expense is made back many times over by increased rent income for the school. A smart investment, definitely, but who are these people? Persuaded to spend a lot more for on campus housing for a $900 value spread over four years? That's about $18 per month, maybe the school should just offer them a few 12 packs.
In Soviet Russia, FUNNY FIFTEEN YEARS AGO stopped being THIS JOKE!
Sex - Find It
Meanwhile....fee's to attend this college go up the exact price of an Apple IBook.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
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.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
With that kind of price difference, he could even buy a beowulf cluster of those lapt... *smack*
*ouch*
*wince*
In olden days, you give teacher an apple!
Quite the shock to check /. and see yer dad on the front page :)
Maine has started a program giving iBooks to 7th graders. Their goal is to eventually loan one to EVERY middle school student in the state. I did a quick google search and here's the first article I found.
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
Man with free laptop merely waiting for dancer.
Steve Jobs
Apple Computer
I graduated in the mid 80's, please send me one of your iBooks.
Thank you,
grubby
Trolling is a art,
For that matter, I once ran across Sally Jessie Raphael while flipping channels and recognized a friend's wife as a guest. The topic of the show?
Married Prostitutes. I'm not making that up. The friend died of AIDS last year.
KFG
The students do not keep the computers, unless they finish two years in the honors program.
My college has these iMacs that we used to use for our homework assignments. One day, I editting my photos and downloading to my iPod on it when all of a sudden a letter from the registrar's office came in. They said I flunked out, and they took my Mac. All of it! The printer, too! I had to move out back to my dad's house quickly. Needless to say, dad's house isn't nearly as good, and I blame that iMac for failing out.
I'm happy to report my dad has a PC and it crashes too much to actually do anything fun on, so now I just rush my papers and they're good enough for the local community college, and my grades have all been really good.
Thanks a lot, Apple.
Ellen
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In my city I would have my choice of two schools within 10 minutes walk from my parents home. One of them is a city community college allied with the state system ( get your associates at the city college and automatic transfer to the four year program at state) and one is an expensive, ritzy, private college of high repute (Union). And this in a city of only 50,000 residents.
I could get a new "businessman's" one bedroom apartment, equally within walking distance, for only $450/month. Ok, that's $5,400/year, plus food, but to have my own home rather than a dorm room. Get a roomate, if you are so inclined, and have the shared home, but enough left over to buy the laptop on your own, and odds are you'ld have to share the crappy little dorm room anyway, with a "bathroom" you have to share with the whole frikkin' dorm, not just one other person. Rent the apartment first yourself and you even have *personal choice* up front over whether you think your potential roomie is suitable. Pop for another $500/year between the two of you and you each get your own bedroom.
A "college student's special" studio apartment would only set you back $350/month (yes, with everything). That's only $4200 a year.
Most colleges have private student housing available within walking distance of campus, and those that don't I've found usually provide free shuttlebus service to/from town. Not as convienient as your own car but a damned sight cheaper.
Living on your own in town can also be the difference between being able to keep up with your school work AND maintain a part-time job, and not being able to work except for a "student work program" which pays less than minimun wage. This difference alone could make up for a couple of iBooks a year.
All that being said there are valid reasons beyond the financial for the college encouraging people to live on campus. Thoreau once marveled at the fact that colleges charge you money for the least valuable service they provide, i.e. classes, while the most valuable service, living within the enviroment of the campus and associating with all and sundry in that enviroment, essentially came free. He had a point.
KFG
Would this be newsworthy if it wasn't an iBook? It seems that /. has joined Wired in the practice of publishing articles that are not newsworthy as long as Macs are involved. Would this be news if they were giving away Dell's? If they were giving away free M$ software this would be a warning article but since it is Apple, the university can push Apple's platform by giving away free hardware and software without the tiniest bit of dissent on /.. If MS made a laptop and this university gave away MS laptops preloaded with windowsXP, people would be screaming that the world is going to end.
it has every port i could ever want
You must be one of the lucky few here with a girlfriend. I believe the /. term for a person like you is "temporary visitor." :)
It all goes downhill from first post
My college began to "give" (part of fees) laptops to all incoming students in 1995, pretty much the first school to do so.
My new laptop was a PII-233 Acer, with a 3.2GB drive and I opted for 64MB of RAM instead of 32MB. It only had a 800x600 screen, but it served me well my four years, and I still use it semi-regularly (though it has 160MB of RAM now). The laptop was ours, though any unauthorized hardware tinkering would void the nice 4-year warranty. During my stay, I had two motherboards, one hard drive, one LCD screen, the upper plastic shell, two LCD front and back bezels, a power supply board, and a power brick replaced.
While the laptop was invaluable for getting work done, it was also a distraction. With a network port at every desk, ICQ became the equivalent of note-passing. Many kids I knew freshman year had to drop out, as they spent the majority of their time playing Starcraft and Quake II, chatting on ICQ and IRC, playing in MUDs, and downloading MP3s. Still, it was pretty useful for emailing professors, getting reports done, and making CEOs jealous in airports.
The major heartache with laptop ownership happened every fall, when the freshmen would get their shiny new laptops, one full year of computing technology later. During the last year, it was getting difficult to run some of the applications needed for class, on outdated hardware. Everyone I knew ended up buying a desktop machine. With the network connection, I could RDP, VNC, or X applications from my desktop to my laptop. This was pretty much necessary when trying to crunch large mathematical problems in MATLAB; *especially* useful when modeling 3D electromagnetic fields. The laptop was also unable to make anyone jealous.
If there was one thing I would change about the laptop program, it would be to update the hardware every two years. A two-year-old laptop would still hold some value for charity or resale, and the upperclassmen would not be held down by inferior hardware during their most intensive classes.
...
In Soviet Russia, joke tell YOU when it's stopped being funny!
Doesn't everyone find it ironic that the most heavily worked and under-appreciated folks at a university, the Teaching Assistants and other staff people, are NOT eligable for the iBook deal?
No, I have never been a TA.
And I never want to be one.
It's probably cheaper than everyone buying their iBooks separately. Bulk orders always work out cheaper per unit, moreso for educational institutions.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.