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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."
RPI's not a huge surprise? I expected MIT at number one... not below the top 25. Same for many others. WTF?
Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
With as much emphasis as the survey put on wireless networking, I'd think good security would be one of the most important factors in a well-wired campus.
It's sad that something this high-profile apparently dismisses the importance of network security.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
And then once I got on, the slowdown was that our new superfast server (danube, IIRC) was bogged down running poorly written interpreted, recursive, memory-hogging programs by 500+ students all trying to get in under the wire.
Sigh. The good old days.
The CB App. What's your 20?
A major portion of their analysis seems to be the ratio of students to computers, but that is rather unfair: they are only counting campus-owned computers, not the ones students bring with them. For example: my alma matter, the University of Washington, has two EXCELLENT, large computer labs, plus others scattered about the various buildings. They also have Wi-Fi network s (though not campus-wide). But still, the majority of students bring their own computers (wether laptops they carry or desktops in their dorms). And ya know what, it didn't even make the list! This is bull-crap!
William George
I read this on some IRC channel a couple'a years ago...
A: this school i'm trying to apply for is asking me all these stupid questions. like "why do you want to attend our school?"
B: tell them 'cuz you got a phat pipe that i can use to download porn, warez and mp3s.
This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
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!
Now has amazing connectivity. The entire campus (quite large) is entirely "lit up" with wireless hot-spots, and most buildings have an ethernet tap for every classroom seat.
To make it better, in the student housing, for some pitifully low amount ($25?), you get a 20 megabit(!) connection. All paid for by student fees, of course.
Now, I'm all for computers. But when tuition has tripled over the past ten years, parking costs have quadrupled, and student fees are going out the roof - all the time real services to students are decreasing - it makes me wonder if it's really worth it.
Am I really going to be a better engineer if I have a 20 megabit connection to my home vs. a 1- or 2-megabit? Not really. Will a sociologist find better research to study over the 20-megabit connection? Nope.
The matter extends into the classrooms - while some connectivity has a very good payoff, they've gone to such lengths that the cost has far, far exceeded the benefits. It's just plain irresponsible.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
NYU has aeron chairs in the library computer lab....doesn't that count for something? Or not, but maybe it explains why I pay $1000 a unit here.
Don't be fooled by the promise of connectivity and online registration! If you care at all about your sanity, go somewhere else! RPI is not a g -- asfedj;sah( &Gfsogf AGOYD SABDAISLHD!! MUST ... KILL ... LINCOLN.....
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
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?
--
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.
I teach at a good sized state university, and we were well ahead of the curve in being "wired" (we could easily answer "yes" to almost all the questions on the forbes survey). But I have colleagues who don't know how to use their computers. While there are attempts to train faculty and draw them more into the information age, there are still far too many (usually older) faculty members (and staff) who are out of touch technologically. Department pages are very slow to be updated on the web (if they exist at all), students freely plagiarize from online sources knowing their professor won't use google to catch them, and computer labs are cesspools of viral activity because the OS's aren't kept up to date.
What's worse, the university has bought into inflexible proprietary software solutions such as PeopleSoft, WebCT, and Blackboard to try to manage tasks which would be much better served by more flexible tools. I don't know as much about Peoplesoft (other than that I hate using it and it doesn't always work with my Mac), but my experience with the online teaching tools is that we would have been much better off with open source solutions like classweb, being developed at UCLA.
But of course it's a lot more difficult to measure such things on this sort of survey.
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.
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.
I'd expect a lot of smaller, more obscure schools to rank more highly. Particularly when the ratio of technology to student body is so heavily used. USD for example not only has a great ratio of desktops to students, but also provides PALMs to incomming students and has network/power conneectors for laptops at most classroom seats. Yet they only scored number 17.
It would seem that a college with very few students would have a far easier time beating the ratio game.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
- Is there a campuswide network?: yes
- Is there a wireless network?: yes
- Can students access e-mail away from school?: yes
- Does the school provide Web pages?: yes
- Does the school offer classes online?:
- Can students register online?: yes
- Can students do other administrative functions online?: yes
- Are students required to own a computer?: No, thats what labs are for!
- :Can students get discounted computers? yes
- Does the school support handheld computers? yes
- Does the school stream audio or video of any courses?: yes
- Is network access available in dorm rooms?: yes
- Is network access available in dormitory lounges?: yes
- Is a computer ethics policy in place for the school?: yes
- :Do students have access to Usenet newsgroups?: yes
- Does tuition include a computer?: No, thats what labs are for!
- Does the school provide multimedia equipment?: yes
- Does the school offer courses in emerging technologies?: yes
- Does the school stream its campus radio or TV stations?: yes
Looks like they didn't even bother doing the minimal amount of research.I really can't tell how they did the research for the article. With so many basic wrong answers for GW, I can't imagine that they surveyed the schools themselves. Some of the questions that were wrong were the first things they tell you about on the tours when you visit; I can't imagine that GW wouldn't tell Forbes what they tell high school seniors. If the writer did the research himself, he needs to think about another career. The same can be said if they had interns doing the work, which is probably the case. But I still don't understand, many of these questions could have been answered by simple searches from GW's homepage.
Simply said, this article has no founding whatsoever. If other school's information is as wrong as GW's, then this article can't even be taken with a grain of salt.