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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."
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.
I remember dialing in with a 9600 baud modem to do my CS 60A (scheme) homework at UC Berkeley and only getting 2400 baud because of the answering modem's speed most of the time.
[..]
Sigh. The good old days.
9600 Baud? Come on youngster, I bet I got pants older than you...
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.
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.
Is there a Wireless Network? (No)
Well if our "nomad" network is not wireless, I don't know what is. And it's been around for about 7 years, starting out as a pre-802.11 network and then upgraded to 802.11b, and just this year upgraded to 802.11g.
Does the school provide web pages? (No)
Every student (rather, every person who has a valid NetID) can sign up for a free page and unix access. You just fill out a simple form and they send you the account info.
Does the school stream audio or video of any courses? (No)
We have a distance education program that streams audio out from a shitton of courses, including one of the classes I'm taking right now. I know this because it's annoying when something screws up and my professor has to take care of that rather than teaching me. And my freshman year they were streaming video online of my engineering fundamentals course, and storing it so we could review lectures later.
Is a computer ethics policy in place for the school? (No)
Then what is this?
Do students have access to Usenet newsgroups? (No)
Well, according to this, we've had usenet access since at least 1995, but I would venture a guess that we had it earlier, since our first network access was a government partnership with Oak Ridge National Labs.
Does the school provide multimedia equipment? (No)
Well, what about this? Or if they're thinking of in classrooms, almost every classroom has a projector and Smartboard (thing you can write on), and many have sound systems. In classrooms.
Does the school offer courses in emerging technologies? (No)
What the hell. You know, I think that that Internet2 Link we have, and all the related CS courses, including a project for a new file system structure for network storage is just for fun.
Does the school stream its campus radio or TV stations? (No)
Uhmmmm.... Try here. Damn these people either suck or we suck at reporting.
And I know for a fact we have more than 1000 computers that are provided by the university for students to use. We have almost that many in the library *alone*.
I hate sigs...