NEC Admits To Ripping Off Schools Through E-Rate Program

MAurelius writes "The New York Times (regist. req'd) is reporting that NEC now admits to ripping off multiple low-income school districts by connecting them to the internet with equipment more advanced and expensive than necessary. Several orders of magnitude more expensive. All paid for by telephone rate-payers. That would be you."

Comments

That's so stupid.

[pedantic bore]

I can't decide whether I'm more surprised that NEC would do something this transparently stupid, or that it took so long for people to notice! It seems like school budgets are gone over with a fine-tooth comb around here; lots of people want to keep costs down because higher school budgets -> more taxes.

Maybe this snuck through because it was done in a separate program funded a different way, but it still amazes me that they thought they wouldn't get caught.

Re:That's so stupid.

[archen]

Actually this doesn't surprise me at all. I know a guy who used to work for a major ISP in the Northeast. Their company would fight tooth and nail to get into schools because of the funding they could get. They would offer to get the school wired, and would offer to do the rather complex paperwork to get grants from the state (or maybe federal, I can't recall). They then would wire schools with rather pricey equipment. Not obscenely out of line equipment, but certainly more expensive than needed. From what I understand, everyone is so concerned about getting schools wired so kids can surf the net instead of learning, that no one is looking at the price tag.

at least...

[Anonymous Coward]

NEC, the computer giant, agreed to plead guilty to two federal felony counts.

At least they pleaded guilty. It's marvellous that big companies can overcome their pride and say that they were wrong without putting up a big fuss.

Justice has been served.

That Much?

[lachlan76]

Multimillions for a school lan? The school that I was at up until 2 years ago seemed like i could have bought all the IT equipment for a couple of hundred dollars. If that.
It must have been all the computers running Win98 and the IT guy wishing he hadn't moved to Win2000 on his main computer. And servers that don't run Linux!!! NT Server 4? Since I left, apparently they ended up having to install software on every second computer, with the costs and all.
That's M$ for you. Not that this is the case this time, except for the servers. The CAL idea though, the servers would have been expensive though...

Cough...oversight...cough

Re:Sounds like a federal program

[Teun]

Where do you get that State-politicians would be any better/worse than Federal politicians?

Wake up!

As a European I believe you'd better hve such a program run by independant beaurocrats than For Profit commercial interests.
And than elect thrustworthy officials to contral the beaurocrats.
But with so few going to the polls, who can complain about the politicians?

Re:Sounds like a federal program

[espo812]

Where do you get that State-politicians would be any better/worse than Federal politicians?

If it's a school system it should probably be done by the local government, because locally elected officials are right next to the needs of a community. A politician 500 miles away dealing with politicians from thousands of miles away isn't in the best position to fix localy handled problems (school systems, roads, welfare, etc.)

As a European I believe you'd better hve such a program run by independant beaurocrats than For Profit commercial interests.

My expierence is that beaurocrats seek to expand their power - that means increasing budget at every opportunity. That isn't beneficial when what they do doesn't necessairly need to even exist (remember, once a program is created it is very hard to get rid of.) The write-up states the government didn't follow competetive bidding proceedures. If they had, the resulting for profit commercial interest selected should have been the most economically efficient company for the task. Granted, that isn't always the case but that's why competetive bid exists.

But with so few going to the polls, who can complain about the politicians?

I see this as an education problem. My peers don't vote and they certainly don't care about state and local elections. I don't understand why, since those officials probably affect them more than the President. I don't know how you get people to care about something important - it's a nobrainer to me.

Atlanta city schools wasted 73 Million dollars

[Shivetya]

http://www.joannejacobs.com/mtarchives/014084.html
http://www.parentadvocates.org/index.cfm?fuseact io n=article&articleID=2893

What NEC did is bad, but don't forget a lot of school boards are just as responsible if not more so. They don't have accountability until after they do something wrong. The problem in Atlanta is really horrid as the per pupil expenditure for education in Atlanta is one of the highest yet produces some of the worst results (we are in the 12k per student range)