Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.