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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."
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Several of the criteria they used in their questionaire had nothing to do with how "connected" the campus is. It is a typical case of "get statistics on phenomenon X, but then report it as if it was phenomenon Y and hope nobody notices the switch."
Here's some examples:
Does tuition include a computer?
Can students get discounted computers?
Are students required to own a computer?
Is a computer ethics policy in place for the school?
Does the school offer courses in emerging technologies?
Now, those are interesting questions, and perhaps useful ones, but they have absolutely nothing to do with how "connected" a campus is, and including them in with the others polluted the results.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.