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America's Most Connected Campuses
foghorn666 writes "Forbes and the Princeton Review have posted their list of America's Most Connected Campuses, which measures the technological capabilities of the country's 357 top colleges and universities. They're looking at infrastructure stuff like whether wireless networks are available, if you can register for classes online, and so on - not really curriculum. But the results are interesting, and the winner not a huge surprise: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute."
sadly, the most connected campus seems to be fairly irresponsible with their student data. 3 years ago, i did a search for a friend who went there, and got a hit on a page including student names matched with Social Security numbers and a test score. We sent an email to the IT guys there... a year later, I did it again- the page was still up, so I told them again. Out of curiosity, I just did the same search, and got the same list. How would you feel knowing that your school was this irresponsible with personal data?
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
RPI was the first technical institution. MIT is newer and is not as tech based as it is science based.
Video Production Support
Oh, here's the MIT page. I think with those two "No" answers corrected, MIT should be #3 on the list.
RPI's not a huge surprise? I expected MIT at number one... not below the top 25. Same for many others. WTF?
Well, unlike MIT, RPI is much much more interested in technology and applied science than pure science - it is an "engineer factory" so to speak. Not only that, but their campus is tiny. A few wireless access points is all it takes to cover the entire place, unlike my school (Cornell University).
When I was there last, it was hard to find a place without wireless or ethernet available. Very cool. Good job RPI!
BTW, if you wonder what they do there, I was talking to Freeman Dyson the other day and he seemed to be very excited about their lightcraft - UFO looking space ships powered by earth-mounted laser generators. He seems to think they are much more likely to work than space elevators.
Cheers,
Justin
So that is how they are going to get people to come to that dead town! Seriously, I visted there on my school tour. The campus is all on a hill and looked like half of it was under construction and the town was the last place I would care to live.
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
This article is completely inaccurate. I checked a couple of schools I'm familiar with and they were all missing multiple items. The rank is more a factor of whether the appropriate person filled out the form. In many schools, there are few administrators who actually know all of the services provided on the campus. Sadly, it's very difficult to get accurate information about technology at a school. The best way is probably to talk to a student. The admissions office has no idea what's going on. I remember listening to the admissions tour at one school. The tour guide lied on multiple facts which I had easy methods to verify. The tour guides are just there to sell the school.
Although it's been a few years since I've lived on campus, I do know some of the people who take care of the network, and I don't think calling it a mess is at all accurate. They firewall off students because students are dumb, and do dumb things, like getting infected with spam bots. And, if you have some semblance of a brain, getting around the firewall isn't very hard. As for off-campus mail support, I agree that sucks, but you can always VPN in and it works fine.
Also, alum mail is broken because it's not being run by RPIs IT folk. Alumni relations contracted it out to some freaking spam host that's killing them on the cost.
As for requiring laptops to run windows, you'll have to talk to my roomate, who hasn't run windows for anything in 3 years (I think he's a moron for this, but he's still done it), on both his RPI-sponsored laptops.
I don't know why you quote "is a" (another astounding feat of RPI english, I guess), but I've certainly never had problems with wireless access on campus, in fact it's available pretty much everywhere I need it.
RPI has a lot of problems, but IT sure as hell isn't one of them. How many other schools have a full-time CCIE?
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lds
Case Study: California Institute of Technology (who recently broke networking speed records)
The study says there is no wireless network (there is), school doesn't provide web pages (it does), can't register online (we do), no ethics policy (a very loose one: the honor code), school doesn't provide multimedia equipment (its available for use), doesn't stream its radio (our radio is only streamed).
What the study got right: I don't think classes are provided online, students are not required to own a computer, tuition doesn't include a computer, and I don't think courses are offered in emerging technologies (if by emerging technologies you mean MS Word). I wouldn't want to go to a school that has these features.
Personally, I think this idea of connectedness is a horrible measure of a school's IT saviness, and I'm not even talking about the erroneous study itself.
can't sleep. clowns will eat me.
Ok, I graduated from RPI not too long ago, and noticed a glaring error in their report on the school. Yeah, I know we won this ranking, and I'm happy to see that. However, when I look at the question "Do students have access to Usenet newsgroups?" and see an "X" (no), I see something wrong.
We definitely have Usenet access, and even have a bunch of rpi.* newsgroups accessable inside the school. Someone definitely overlooked something.
After reading some of the posts below (and TFA), the criteria were very generic and didn't really capture true "wired-ness".
They also didn't get accurate info. for example, CMU absolutely allows personal web pages, nearly every student, professor, and class has one. You can run your own server, or use the school's network. There is a campus-wide file system. When I was there, every incoming freshman (humanities and all) was required to take a computer literacy course that included Unix and emacs. And students don't have access to Usenet? Things must have changed an awful lot in the past 4 years.
And things like requiring students to own a computer - CMU was the kind of place where you didn't have to require it, everyone did it anyway.
The more you look at it, the more it seems this study is just a way to get readers over to Forbes.com. Things like how connected a campus is really can't be determined with any accuracy by a handful of vague characteristics. Hopefully people will do their own research before making any decisions, since I'm sure there are many other great "connected" schools that didn't even make this list.
Yes it is true that the administration are a bunch of tools who really only care about rankings. But the other stuff you said was a little misinformed and outdated.
Yes general purpose computer labs have dwindled in the past years, but everyone has a laptop why do you need a lab? And because of this, the money originally budgeted for labs can now be spend on high end specialized labs (like the new math/compsci labs running linux only).
Also, nobody requires students to run windows, in fact there is a large effort by the ACM and other groups to install linux. Many professors encourage it also, especially if you are a comp sci major. And if you need windows to run say maple for calc class, you can always run windows on your laptop and dual boot linux or get your linux jollies by remotely connecting to one of the hundreds of linux, aix, sun or bsd machines available.
Dorms may be firewalled off, but it isn't restrictive like you claim, it just blocks incoming ssh, ftp and a few others. And the problems with the RIAA came because RPI students wrote some amazing software for searching networks, further demonstrating the power of the RPI network.
Yes the canceling of email for life blows, and I probably will not donate to them because of it, but you really are a bit behind the times on the network. Things are a lot better than they were when you were there. I'm sure things will continue to get even better after I'm long gone as well.
My experince at RPI this summer was very different. There wasn't wireless coverage in the dorm where we were housed. Worse, to get on the wireless network seemed to require some windows-only tool (according to the confrence organizers), so I was SOL with a linux laptop. I didn't much care for the situation as a visitor. I hope it is different for the students.
Then again, some of the measures of how wired the campus is seem a bit stilted. Online registration? Does it matter for small (1000 students) colleges? I'd rather talk with THE registrar personally than have some webform. She can ask me how things are going, suggest alternate courses, and generally keep the system running smoothly.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
North Carolina State University
It says the school does not supply web pages. This is bull crap since I've had a website on the school server for over a year. Plus it explains right here on state's own server HOW to set up your web page.
Create your own homepage
Heck, every freshman undergrad is required to take a computer class where they make their own website.
Now down to the bottom, it says the school does not provide multimedia equipment. Again, completely false. Look at this site again on ncsu.edu
Multimedia Reserve
This is why I hate school rankings like these. They are usually very misleading and often contain false information.
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