Internet Curfew for College Students?

140Mandak262Jamuna writes "IIT Bombay, one of the top Indian engineering schools, is restricting internet access to its students. The restriction is simply to cut off all internet access at night from the dorms. The school claims the 24/7/365 internet access is hampering academic performance, personality development and extra curricular activities. Though these are the 'official' reasons, it appears there are other reasons too. Mr Prakash Gopalan, the Dean of Student Affairs, says, 'one only had to look at the hard drive of any of the students' computers to see that bad content dominated over good.'"

Comments

Re:Uhhh

[Hoi Polloi]

It'll just pose a challenge to their CS and EE students. Just wait until they start rigging up wireless links to outside connections. I welcome our new Indian hackers.

Re:Seems reasonable to me.

[OwenMarshall]

But realize that we are talking about college students -- adults, not children. Providing them with unlimited internet access is an excellent idea -- it ensures that the lazy slackers wash out of college.

For my sophomore year, I had a freshman roommate who used the campus internet to play WoW all night long. Literally -- I went to bed at 2 after finishing engineering homework, was up by 8, and he hadn't moved. Because of that he slept in all day, only to wake up later and play more WoW. Went to classes once a week at best. Guess who dropped out with a GPA below 2.0? Guess who wasn't ready for the real world, and wouldn't be able to hold a job for ten minutes with that approach to life?

An American high-school education is highly devalued from where it was years ago. Social promotions and strict rulesets are eliminating the gap that previously existed between the achieving students and the ones who would fail out. If you narrow that same gap in college, you end up doing the same thing -- churning out students who cannot manage time or priorities, students who stand no chance of surviving in the buisiness world.

Re: Time Management

[TaoPhoenix]

Bravo!

You pegged it perfectly. It's the GRADES that matter. If someone is bright and gets their work done, ... then they graduate with honors. Having completed their fixed task, they get to socialize, which INCLUDES Net access. If you have to work out a high-bandwidth fee, figure it out.

As someone else pointed out, students were lazing about in drunken stupors in the days before net access. I don't care about how someone washes out. Self control is PART of the unstated education of college, where you don't need Bathroom Passes.

As a much larger issue, in the 21st century, Content Lockdown mentalities are OBSOLETE. Yes, this terrifies many Powers-That-Be. Deal. The Information Age is here forever, and it's only going to get MORE intense.

Universities are ridiculously expensive anyway. They can afford the loss-leader (excepting lawsuits) of a Net connection.

This is just another instance of PowerLust disguised as Think of the Children.