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University Sponsored Music Services?
Amy's Robot writes "The president of Penn State University is urging colleges to start their own digital music services. The schools would pay the licensing fees, and pass the charges on to their students. His logic is that paying for the school's service is an incentive not to use an "illegal" service. Supposedly, there will be some pilot programs this fall, but it seems like there are a lot of obstacles to overcome before then."
I'm not sure this will work... For example, there are plenty of universities who license software for discounted or free student use and yet software piracy is rampant on campuses
From the link: " In addition, pirates need a place to store their 'warez' and often surreptitiously hijack third party servers to use as storage sites. This problem is especially acute at universities. "
Why do I h8 apple?
On PSU's board of trustees sits one of the major lawyers for the RIAA. I hope this explains it.
Finkployd
No lie:
http://www.psu.edu/trustees/robinson.html
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Well, I certainly couldn't pass that! Only one class in my major, instead of almost all but one? Are American universities that different from Canadian ones? I guess.
Lesse, first year undergraduate Computer Science in 1979-80 at Concordia in Montreal, Canada involved a two semester Advanced Calculus course, Statistics, Linear Algebra, Fortran, CDC 6600 Assembler, "Data Structures" a.k.a. "Pascal" (this was 1979, remember), COBOL, Computer Organization (hardware design and architecture), and an elective, I think. Certainly no English Literature, Fine Arts, and definately no Phys Ed. -- the acadamic courses in that triad would be more of a Liberal Arts education.
FWIW, I graduated Magna Cum Laude, Honours Computer Science in 1982 (missing Summa Cum Laude by 0.2%) and went on to a graduate degree.
Had I had to take Fine Arts courses, I'dve failed them miserably.
You could've hired me.
Wow, so many things to commment on.
"And, instead of being a tool for social mobility, higher education will become (for my children's generation) a barrier to social mobility."
Higher education was not, originally a tool for social mobility. Until the mid-1900s, it was only for the wealthy. It served as a forum for maintaining the social class system, throughout the western world. With the economic booms following both wars, people in the middle classes of the West found themselves able to afford higher education for their children, which they thought would enable social mobility. Statistically, this was false, since most couldn't afford a school with enough quality to make significant economic gains, at first. With the increased booms through the 60s and 70s (until the mid-80s, really) it finally did permit mobility. What I'm saying here is that its not a valid critique of education to complain that its not a tool for social mobility. Education is for intellectual advancement, which only may or may not include material gains.
"Hopefully this will mean less worthless degrees, such as, English and History"
You, sir, are an arse. To claim that education in english and history is worthless is to be ignorant of the value of both art and collective memory to society. Without historians, we would forget our past and [as is oft quoated glibly] be doomed to repeat it. As for english, the critical study of art [in all forms] is vital to the understanding of human society, with extensions througout the social sciences from anthropology, psychology and more. As for your wife teaching, anyone who thought ahead would have discovered [long before graduation] that teaching typically requires a graduate degree. However, you're incorrect in assuming that all art/english majors are unqualified for professional jobs. Among others, I have over a dozen people I could list off the top of my head amongst my friends and my sister's friends who had degrees in art, history or english who went straight from college into jobs in major commercial companies (ranging from a top magazine, an ad company, and the PR department of NY City and more) without different degrees. Maybe the reason your wife wasn't "qualified" had more to do with her and her personal education, than with the general education entailed by art/english/history degrees.
"More students should consider attending a State or Community college for the first 2 years of under-grad. It is cheaper and, for the first 2 years, the worthless subjects taught are about the same.
At my undergrad, there are no worthless subjects taught. Georgetown has a core set of requirements involving classes in several departments (including philosophy, theology, english, history, math/science, language) which can be fulfilled by taking low or high level classes. I never took a course labelled below 100 level, and couldn't have gotten anything on the level of the classes I took at a state school (my several friends at U.Florida confirm this every time we talk about school). You get what you pay for.
"Stumble before you crawl"