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Big Company on Campus
Daniel Dvorkin writes "MSNBC (oh, the irony) is running a scary article entitled Microsoft's big role on campus, detailing how Microsoft is working its way into academic computer science through a combination of bribery and propaganda. The aricle may be overstating the case, but it does make it sound as though MS products are displacing others at a disturbing rate in computer science departments. Given that academic computing has traditionally been both the source of and the stronghold for innovative software, this is a disturbing long-term trend."
Fundings funding. If they want to give my alma mater 1.6 million to use Windows, I think that's just great.
Computer Science isnt "how to use your computer". The concepts and techniques you learn are beyond any operating system. Good algorithm design and analysis transcends linux vs windows vs mac osx.
When I did my degree, half the classes used Windows, the other half linux, and now, a few years later, I really cant remember which was which.
It was irrelevant, I wasnt learning computers, or even how to program in C, I was learning concepts.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
...We're all aware that computers that can run Microsoft Windows are also capable of running Linux, many versions of BSD, and Solaris/x86. So, we end up with several free OSes, and a few commercial OSes (counting some of the commercial BSDs) that will run on the hardware. My favourite computer science professor had a computer at his desk that had a windows license sticker, but he never even booted into Redmond's OS before he wiped it and installed Linux.
Many large colleges have UNIX clusters of some form. ASU has the "general" cluster, on Solaris machines. U of A has the "U" cluster. I don't think that UNIX is going anywhere, these systems have thousands of simultaneous users and seem to be fairly stable considering all of the local accounts.
It could also be that maybe colleges are trying to keep their licensing in full compliance instead of getting sloppy about it, for fear of the retribution that could come later.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Round here at the big state-run universities (Cairo U, etc.) you can get legal copies of Windows, Office, and Visual Studio for the total of around 25 egyptian pounds, or around 4 or 5 US dollars.
That is, of course, breathtakingly shocking. But then, it is common knowledge that the IT ministry is in cahoots with MS.
Offtopic, but is 'campuses' the right plural for campus, or would that be campii, or something?
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
(Damn, the phone rang. I could have had first post on a red-meat Micro$oft story!)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
a few years a go while i attened the university of southern california, i was surprised to find out that the UI design class in java i signed up for was now a introduction to MFC programming class.
the announcement my professor made show'ed she wasnt terribly happy with this. In addition every student in the class recieved a copy of windows NT professional and Visual Studio. This really stank for me, as a linux user, it meant that I had to work in the computer labs on campus.
In addition to the cut throat competition style bribes to the students, they also gave the computer department thousands and thousands of dollars that year. of course, one third of the sun machines were then replaced with dells...
the article is not over-reacting. How can we stop this? I think universities are lured by money, but are even more scared of losing cred. We as a developer community should loudly and publicly question the academic virtue of schools who whore themselves and their students out like this.
--------------------- Turn evil by smiling.
That doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft software per se, it has to do with whatever bonehead did your campus system's capacity planning.
Selling it? At my school they were giving a bunch of microsoft tools away (due to a shady contract). However our CS department was also all suns.
From what I hear though since I've graduated, a few of the profs are trying to switch to MS stuff. The university has since created a Windows lab much to the displesure of the rest of the CS department. Even most of the students are upset about it.
Many people were first exposed to unix systems there and would never have considered anything other than windows. Of course microsoft wants to get rid of these unix systems so that people continue to think that there is nothing else out there.
And the are winning.
The "William H. Gates" building at MIT, part of their new computer science complex, was paid for by a certain individual whose name appears on the building. Additionally, Microsoft funds a great amount of "research" around campus, giving undergrads the opportunity to work for Microsoft at $7.50/hour.
Don't feel like paying an employee? Pay a school and get students to do it instead!
Needless to say, I'm bitter about "Microsoft presents 'College Education.'"
-agent oranje.
So I walk down to the bookstore. I can get a Blue Box OS/2 3.0 CD for $199. The C compiler was some outrageous expense- ~$500 if I remember. Everything else was a fortune: the sysadmin ran a beautiful editor (forget the name) that was ~$300/copy.
Sitting next to this was a copy of VisualC++. $99 In the box as extras were full copies of J++ and NT4.0. It also ran some nice chemistry visualization stuff that OS/2 wouldn't. For that price, why not give it a try? So I started running NT4. (Linux was out: too new and didn't run a fraction of the software I needed.)
I can't have been the only one. Apple learned this lesson ages ago: stuff the schools and people will use your system for years to come.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
at a question-and-answer session between the academics and Gates, one professor asked the Microsoft founder about his views about the study of information technology, a part of computer science that emphasizes on how documents, spreadsheets and other data should be handled. What kinds of technologies should students majoring in this subject be taught?
Gates replied quickly and with a smile: "Microsoft Office."
Yes, MSFT will try to benefit itself by attaching strings to money.
It is incumbent upon universities that call themselves places of learning, open-minded, bastions of science, to refuse money that comes attached with any strings.
If MS funds general research into CS, great.
If the money is contingent upon the university replacing standard infrastructure with MS proprietary infrastructure, the decision to change infrastructure should be made completely independent of the money.
Otherwise, it looks as if the univesity can be bought by the highest bidder.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
When I was starting college, we had a one-day orientation to let us get to know the campus, and the professors who would be teaching us. During a question-and-answer period, one of the kids asked the Comp Sci head what kind of computer he should bring with him. The professor spoke for a few minutes about the college's development labs (mostly MS), then about the DogNet lab (BSD), and finally settled on saying that a dual-boot, MS/Linux pc would be the best bet.
Then he looked at the kid and asked, completely straight, if he was "thinking about doing anything silly, like bringing a Mac."
Of course, this was far before OSX, so his critisism was justified.
Thomas Galvin
Also, I noticed they switched from borland to visual C++ to teach programming courses during my stay at the college. Instead I went on to get a double major in German and International business and taught myself PERL, PHP, MySQL, Linux, FreeBSD, DNS/BIND. It was scary that I knew more about databases than the CIS majors in the database programming class. I would ask simple questions about joins and other things and get a blank stare in return. The instructor was teaching them how to use Access for 90% of their work and had about one chapter over MSSQL. Most didn't even know what SQL even was let alone why it may just be important to know in the business world. I mean every other database package, except for Access, can use "SELECT * FROM table_name". Is SQL that hard to learn if one understands the theory of programming? No, not really, but I had already learned enough to be dangous. Did I know all the absolute nitty, gritty details of what queries would run the fastest and all that, no, but neither did the CIS students.
With my International Business degree and German I ended up working for a great little start-up firm that now is making about $500k in revenue and growing and hold the title of VP/IT Director and trying to get Linux on more than just our webservers and suceeding and my pay is proably more than what most are making as jr. level coders.
One thing I did notice when I spent a semester in Germany was that the German fochhochschule had two computer labs, one with XP, the other SuSE Linux. People were becoming familar with both MS Office and Star/Open Office.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Professors are cheap and the price is dropping.
Textbook sales are another good example of the professor and business. When the prefessor, or department, can dictate the purchase of thousands of dollars in books, you can be certain that there is a great deal of schmoozing going along with the sale. If you want your $100 a pop textbook to be accepted by a major university, you better be prepared to roll out a red carpet for the decision makers.
A friend of mine works for a major, highly-respected publisher of computer texts. She mentioned a while back that Microsoft is giving them so much money to write and publish their .NET line of books that the publisher has no financial risk when adding .NET books to it's list of titles. These new titles are both general consumption .NET books and CS texts for universities. They can be produced at a higher quality and sold at a lower price than books on non-MS subjects. Just another part of the general strategy to choke off Linux and Java's air supply by having CS graduates coming out of schools trained in Windows/.NET instead of Linux/Java.
For example, our local community college requires that every student take a course entitled "Intro to Information Management Systems." This course, with such a lofty title, teaches students the following:
I asked the professor why they require everyone to take this stuff. The reason he gave is that they were asked to do so by the local business community (Chamber of Commerce and the like.)
You can blame Microsoft for infesting CS departments, but schools like to believe they provide a service to the community, and the community asks for Microsoft. Don't like it, send a letter to your local schools from your business asking them to use the tools your business uses in teaching their students.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
I got $15 an hour as a UROP.
On the topic at hand, I only
wish that the new Gates building
were "Building 666". I know they
would be skipping a few numbers,
but it would be well worth it.
What are you selling for this this money?
:n tOp tion
Are you selling your rights away? Subjecting yourself to possibly illegal observation?
Here are some selections from the MS Student License Aggreement
http://www.microsoft.com/education/?ID=CAStude
"
Perpetual Student Use Rights
Upon graduation, students licensed under the Student Option are granted
perpetual use rights for the selected Campus Agreement products.
All other students are only licensed to use the software for the
subscription term. These licenses are non-perpetual (meaning the
student does not own the license). Upon leaving the institution
(besides graduation) or expiration of the subscription term, students
are required to remove the software. Your institution is responsible
for communicating the appropriate use rights to students when
distributing the software. Guidelines for facilitating compliance are
outlined in the Master Campus Agreement Terms and Conditions. To the
extent that your institution follows these guidelines, you will not be
held responsible for students' failure to remove the software.
"
>
THis is the kernel of the problem. Now the university is the henchman
of microsoft.
Introspection is the key to understanding
I had heard about microsoft's selling their software to college students at drasticly reduced prices before. however, I am currently going through orientation in a PHD program at a certain University in Indiana and they have Microsft office available for FREE to students via download. And certain students can get acess to their OS's for free as well. Now certainly what has happened is that my university has probably included the cost of these in tuition.
During orientation I mentioned that you could download Openoffice and its open source. Their responce was, "But microsoft office is free, why not use it?" I could not get these people to understand why they shouldn't download a microsoft product.
If we can't get phd students who claim to be active in social causes to understand why microsoft is evil, it will be very long time before we get the typical apathetic person to understand.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Actually, if your University (like mine, unfortunately) has a Campus Software Agreement, it's actually not cheap. You pay for it semester after semester, whether or not you actually use all of the Microsoft software (to the tune of several million per year ($10 million / 50 thousand applicable people == 200 per year per person (you pay for this in your campus privilege fees). If someone has exact numbers on the cost of a Campus Agreement, please post!). Not only that, but a previous version is required. Therefore, if you buy a new PC, you're unlikely to actually be able to use the new version (because you already have it, as required of the OEM by Microsoft). If you do end up going down to buy a copy from your uni, you most likely don't need a new version; your old one would likely have kept you just fine (how many are still using Windows 98 with Office 97?), so you're actually shelling out quite a bit for software you either don't need or wouldn't buy ordinarily.
Indeed, you're actually paying several times ($1000-2000?) what you would ordinarily be paying.
Microsoft, of course, loves this. You (myself included!) feel like you're not getting your money's worth if you don't go down and stock up on software you're already paying for. On top of that, you're spamming friends and relatives with the latest versions of MS Office, Windows Media Player, and requesting software for their latest version. You're becoming a vital cog in their upgrade treadmill and are more effectively advertising Microsoft than their marketing department could(!), and you're paying for the privilege of helping Microsoft!
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
I have to side against all the anti-M$ people on this one. You're missing the point, and if you're out of college, you missed the point. There are two things you should be learning in college (besides how to drink), and those are how to think, and how to work.
As much as they might like to, Microsoft can't control how we think about abstract problems. If you learn about linked lists using Visual C++, vi and gcc, or pascal and EDT, you are STILL learning about linked lists.
However, it DOES matter what you get exposed to while you're learning the concepts. At my university, programming classes were taught on a VAX/VMS cluster, and on Sun workstations. Learning to code on the Suns gave me skills I use today in my job, where I program under linux. Using the VMS cluster gave me nightmares that will take decades to fade.
I worked for a little while doing Visual BASIC programming, and it wasn't that bad. I tried to learn Visual C++ while I was there, and it stumped me. I know C++. I don't know how to effectively use the interface for that beast, nor all the API calls that I'd use if I coded with it every day. Had I been able to do some of that at university, I'd have a better chance in the Real World (TM).
What most slashdotters forget in their rabid anti-Microsoft raving, is the ancient quote "Know thine enemy". I'd much rather know how to use all the "evil" M$ products, so I can clearly make cases for and against them when the opportunity arises, than to just chant "They're EVIL!" and hope they go away.
Besides, creativity will find a way. If you don't think there are pretty clever windows programmers out there, you haven't looked very hard. And linux would NEVER have become this popular without the M$-Empire to make it stand out.
In the CS department at UCLA, Microsoft has been around for a long time. On the first day of "Intro to Programming," every student got a brand-spankin-new, still shrink-wrapped box of MS Visual Studio 6.0.
Frankly this is brilliant marketing on Microsoft's part. When these students learn to program, they are now familiar and comfortable within VS. So what are they going to use later in life?
On the other hand, Microsoft is anything but pervasive in the CS labs. Probably about 50% of the machines have Windows only (but they all have Exceed on them also). About another 30% are Solaris, and the rest are Linux. Also, Microsoft products are free for engineering students, from Windows XP to BizTalk server. Even so, professors don't encourage Windows use--in fact most projects once you're out of the intro level are required to be done on UNIX or Linux.
I don't see this as as big a problem as it's being made out to be here. Windows will be shoved down everyone's throats no matter where they are. Smart people will still investigate all their options and made an educated decision.
--j
People who consider technical issues over making a quick buck do not rise to levels of significant decision making authority, neither in business nor in academia.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
i am a public school teacher and am finishing up a masters' in technology. you have no idea how microsoft makes it presence felt. they throw freebies to our district IT people. in college, our professors require work in either .doc or .ppt, and we get office for like $20.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Besides which, if you think that Microsoft ripping off Q-DOS to make MS-DOS and then copying Apple to make Windows is 'innovative' then I have a bridge that might be for sale...
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
And, for all of the alternatives you've mentioned, all of these languages are available FOR FREE, unlike .NET.
There are GNU equivalents for all of the above. You can get a great academic Smalltalk called Smalltalk/X (free for non-commercial use), or even better, Squeak (www.squeak.org) which has been designed specifically for educational use.
There is NO REASON to sell out to microsoft at all.
Of course, you'll get the argument that you should be learning "real world" skills in university, and therefore you should learn all Microsoft software...BUT--this is the realm of college, not university. College has traditionally been for specific training, and university for the more theoretical aspects. Only the School of Business idiots believe otherwise, and their course is more college-like than they'd like to admit (YES WLU, I'm looking RIGHT AT YOU).
Quite true. When I was in school, we had several different computers: TRS-80s, Ti-994/As, Apple IIs, and maybe a PC somewhere. True, they weren't used to their full potential in that no one that I know of was doing any programming on them, but at least you got to see a variety of hardware running a variety of software. Now, you have Windows, Windows, Windows, and maybe a Mac somewhere in there. Kids are growing up knowing nothing but MS products, and MS likes it that way.
Where are the open source advocates in all this? Schools are strapped for cash, and this presents a wonderful opportunity to expose them to new things. My God, look at how much they can save if they switch to OpenOffice the next time they upgrade their office suites. How about having someone who would like to teach basic programming offer to teach students one or two days a week, maybe on a weekend. There may not be many students who'd volunteer to come in at those times, but the ones who do would be really interested. And it makes the school look damn good in the community. The volunteer teacher also benefits by getting a nice entry on their resume. And finally, the students benefit by not only getting a class that they might not otherwise have, but they're also exposed to something other than the same old MS software. And the open source movement benefits by getting additional exposure and a pool of future programmers. Everyone wins.
actually i work for a college and we pay 34 dollars per desktop for a bundle of xp/office/visio/and visual studio. this is changing in 2005 though. microsoft is dropping our educational discount. that's why we're heavily researching linux on the desktop. plus we're a novell shop so ximian desktop is going to look really good to us in 2005.
All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss. -Douglas Adams
If memory serves, the cost for each student was something like $50 per semester, or $5 per credit hour or something like that. This is in addition to the $5 per CD, so if you want WinXP it's $5 for the CD, VS.NET was $25 for the 5 CD's. Financially, it works out best for people about to graduate.
And at A&M the students voted it in. There was a referendum and everything. To put it in perspective, say it was a $5 per credit hour increase - we had just passed a $30 per credit hour fee increase and people raised bloody hell. I was even in charge of writing the code to select all the students "grandfathered" against that fee when they decided only to hand it to incoming freshmen and certian other students with this bizarre algorithm.
But at a major university, you've got to remember who's paying. Many of the kids are there on their parents' nickel, and they see anything on the bill as something they won't have to see or mess with. It's kinda the same mentality of paying for something with a credit card - anything that's not out of pocket is seen as "free" (no surprise then that credit card companies often target college students).
No, it's only the students that either have restrictive scholarships or are paying for everything themselves through financial aid or out of pocket that raise issues - and they're voted down by the majority of the students. Ultimately it boils down to college being expensive in any event.
But on the other side of the coin, to some degree we all know piracy is rampant on college campuses, and students instinct is not to go to free (as in GPL) software. Your parents buy you a Dell but it has XP Home and you need XP Pro to join a domain. No problem, find the guy with the XP Pro Corporate God edition to upgrade your system. Get Office XP Pro and VS.NET while you're at it (even though you're an English major and will never need VS.NET ever). Now Microsoft is offering you the opportunity to not be a dirty pirate for the low price of $5 a CD and some fees you'll never see because the bill goes to your folks.
So let's say you take 15 hours a semester - two semesters times $5 per credit hour is $150, plus a one-time $5 per CD fee. VS.NET alone is over a thousand dollars (though in all fairness not everyone needs it). By your numbers, you would have to be in college for over ten years to rack up $2000 in these MS fees.
Schnapple
If MS wants to donate money and licenses to univerisites, why is that suddenly bribery and propaganda? Apple was doing this long before MS. No one's pointing a gun at the schools and saying they need to say yes. MS has an agenda to develop and sell software. If they want to partner with universities, that's their right. If you think it's not in a university's best interest, blame the university, not MS. The MS bigotry is getting old.
But now, not much comes out of US academia in terms of usable software. The funding isn't there, it isn't perceived as research, and academic computer science departments represent a tiny fraction of computing today.
So, schools that train what are basically Microsoft Certified Software Engineers are probably inevitable.
My point remains the same - one of the picasso-esque towers of the Stata Center is dubbed "The William H. Gates" building, and there's the "Gates Entry." Not like the name means anything, and it'll be stripped as soon as the building is opened to students. But somewhere in there, there'll be a plaque thanking good ole Billy for his delightful contribution to the institute.
I'm all for new buildings, and I couldn't care less who actually funds them. However, Microsoft has and will continue to influence the research being done at LCS, the material in courses, and certainly the operating systems commonly used on department-owned machines. The graphics lab has upgraded many old SGI machines to sparkly-new Windows machines... what, for their speed, stability, or security?
-agent oranje.
What's even more fun is when your professor has himself written a book, and since he gets to dictate what the "required texts" for the class are, he includes his own almost-related book. It gets better: After each of the 300+ students has been forced to buy his book, he fails to use it whatsoever in the class.
Let's see... 300 students per quarter, 1 book per student, and the author gets ~5 bucks per book sold (yes, that is an acurate figure for most textbooks) - that comes out to a cool 1500 per quarter. Not much compared to his salary, I'm sure, but it's nice pocket change.
But I suppose that's not technically extortion, is it...
I'm not sure if my post will get past the /. thresholds...with my posting so late in the game.
There was this article written about 4 months ago on an Indian website about another technique that Microsoft uses to get leverage in universities by using so called Student Ambassadors. The gist of the article is that they get insider info about profs from students, and then send a marketing crew bearing "gifts" such as class presentations, textbooks, notes, exams, and of course software! Though it seems kind of slanted towards .NET, the writeup has interesting points. The article also has a short interview with a student ambassador (the student seems pro-Microsoft.) Check out http://www.sulekha.com/column.asp?cid=305808
for the entire article.
If you are too lazy to go there, here's the text (hopefully, the author doesn't mind...besides, that website is probably grateful not to get /. traffic!)
---
Robbing The Cradle
Most of you've heard of the tiny and flaccid Redmond beast. Yes, I'm referring to Microsoft, the scapegoat that gets trashed on a daily basis -- by software cognoscenti, open-source zealots, the federal government, and on occasion even by third-rate start-ups. But this public, private, and federal outrage at Microsoft is only a manifestation of that ingrained human sentiment characterized as "rooting for the underdog." And it's gone too far -- the underdog now seems to be anybody with an axe to grind against Softie. Like Gates says -- it has become fashionable to pick on Microsoft. Here's a company that has dramatically changed the face of the corporate world, mostly for the better, yet everybody is out to get them. At least, this is how I felt about Microsoft until a few weeks ago.
I'm a rabid sports fanatic. I enjoy watching a bone-crunching haymaker in the boxing ring as much as the next red-blooded male. When a boxer fights for keeps, tooth and nail, and benefits from the occasional "dirty" hit, I do not object. This is boxing, damnit; the game isn't meant for the faint of heart. So when the loser whines about the refereeing or low blows -- in my book, he is a sore loser. But here's where my blood lust stops. If the boxer punches out his girlfriend at home, I'm the first one in line clamoring to castrate the bugger. My reasoning is sound. Hitting (clean or otherwise) belongs only within the confines of a boxing ring. To me, the business world is like a boxing ring. By all means, use any and all winning techniques -- but only within the confines of business. Do not cross over into sanctified areas. As I found out, Microsoft is now neck deep in muck -- innovatively engaged in corrupting academia, tearing apart the world of learning like never before. Read on.
How many people know of Microsoft's latest Student Ambassador (SA) thrust? This is a relatively new (18-months young) program that is entirely different from the 3-month internships that Microsoft has traditionally offered college students. The Microsoft SA is a currently enrolled Engineering or Computer Science major in charge of pushing Microsoft technologies on their college campus. For instance, one of their responsibilities is to deliver upwards of 6 on-campus talks per year promoting Microsoft products. Microsoft, in return, provides the SA with resources including books, presentation materials, and onsite (at Redmond) training. Microsoft has seeded almost 200 universities in the US and Europe to date with these zealous "ambassadors". It shouldn't be too long before the program gets underway in Asia (India in particular) as well.
A more ominous (and recent) development is the direct assault on universities by Microsoft's own. Armed with the email address of a SA, they descend on campus with the explicit objective of capturing the curriculum. The SA provides Microsoft visitors with market research -- including information that identifies professors hostile to Microsoft, and those that are not. The Redmond boys then go to work
Tell me about it. I was the geek at our high school. The only geek. All we operated was Microsoft on Desktops. I never used Linux until the county computer guy introduced me to it. I made several failed attempts at using Linux then found a distro I really liked.
But what caused me to want to learn Linux?
1) Microsoft's EULA and licensing system.
2) The price of a copy of Windows
3) The Blue Screen of Death
4) Product Activation
5) Microsoft's changing file formats with every version of office.
I do not, however hate Microsoft. I use Windows when I have to. I don't mind. Given the choice I would instantly choose Linux Mandrake, though. I do try and persuade people to use Linux, but I help these same people on their Windows box (probably why I try and switch them over).
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
Over the years UNIX has benefited greatly from the fact that Universities like Berkeley, MIT and Stanford published research because BSD was wide open. In 1996, when I was a grad student at Berkeley in CS, Microsoft approached the Profs at Berkeley with the source code for NT. The idea was that Berkeley would do research on NT. Amazingly enough the proposal was considered. Rumor was, and I don't know this for a fact, that the only reason the deal fell through is that while Microsoft was willing to release 100% of the source, they weren't willing to relenquish copyright. Derived worked would be owned by Microsoft, even when published. Berkeley said no.
It is interesting then that Microsoft wants research done on .NET.
This is just euphumism for buying cheap research. While $500 million dollars may seem a lot, its nothing compared to the 4 billion of internal expenditure. What are they getting for that 4 billion? My bet would be that if University profs and students start innovating onThere was a story a few years back about a uni in Louisiana where MS came in and replaced all the Unix boxes with 2K boxes and then fouled up completely. They tried streaming video for a football game and parts of the Bell South backbone came down, and the mayor had to go on TV to apologise, claiming it was a "glitch". When MS come to town, things get really screwed up.
Here's the news link - as you can see, that's almost three years ago. MS has been doing this for quite some time.
I agree with you about the main point of what's learned in computer science. In my comp-sci degree, I also consider the abstract concepts that I learned as much more important than the day-to-day software that we were using to learn it. I disagree with your post as a whole, however, since I think the software and tools used can and do have an impact on the learning environment.
By paying out large sums of money and heavily subsidising courses, Microsoft is hampering the independence of the university staff to make the best possible choice of tools for teaching a quality course.
There's certainly an argument that because Microsoft is giving lots of money for its software to be used, it's lowering the fees that I might have to pay and somehow increasing quality in other areas. On the other hand, this is penalising potential makers of higher quality academic software simply because they can't afford to bribe with larger amounts than Microsoft can, and it's penalising students who might not get as useful-a-learning-environment because of it.
XEmacs and GNU emacs both are great 'IDEs' to learn to use -- they work on every platform. Hell, even OS X *ships with GNU emacs.
Also there are a million template/macro/etc bundles out there to use for dozens of languages and it's easy to make your own in arch independent elisp.
Does MSVC++ generate Singleton classes for you in C++ given a class name and a click? Yeah, MSVC++ is pretty crippling after having a truely open development system.
Btw, if you screw around with any of my cheap templates send me comments. I need to release some more C++ templates/template generators. =)
The university I go to has been offline for a few days now, email and all web access. They use only cheapo-M$ products, the dean of CS told me why - M$ charges only a couple of dollars a copy of most software.
We have been trying to get the administration to switch to something reliable, but no dice. School started Monday, and nobody has had email or web since the previous Friday.