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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.'"
Now in addition to tuition, sports, and *gasp* quality of education, students will select schools based on Internet availability.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Eh? What about those of us whose extracurricular activities depend on the Internet? And those of us who colleges offer courses online? Those of us who take classes in the evening, and catch up with our social lives afterward?
Glad I don't live in a dorm.
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>'one only had to look at the hard drive of any of the students' computers to see that bad content dominated over good.'
It's a sad commentary about the Simpsons' effect on our culture - that I can only hear Apu's voice when I read this.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I had 24/7/365 Net xs when I wuz in coll3g3!!! I turn3d 0ut ju5t f1ne!!! LOL!!!!
My blog
So now they download their pr0n during the day instead of at night. Instead of engaging in wholesome activities like playing CS:Source, they will go out drinking and fornicating. College students are going to find ways to be lazy no matter what you do. Just because you can track Internet usage and can't track the other stuff doesn't mean the solution is to cut off the Internet. You are just punishing people who could be using it to further their education.
In any case, I feel sorry for them because clearly they have stupid people in charge. But, on the plus side, they get some real world experience dealing with stupid people making decisions they have no say in.
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If you can't handle college without having the administration trying to force you to work, you aren't going to be able to handle a job. Your boss isn't going to hold your hand. Letting the people spend time on the internet instead of studying weeds out the lazy and promotes the hard working. If you aren't going to make it in your field, it is best you find out quickly, instead of after years of wasted money on college.
I have heard time and time again about Indian education (specifically Computer Science) failing to adequately prepare students for real life. This seems like another example of that.
College students are masters of getting what they want despite rules and regulations. Some enterprising group of CS students will go around caching web sites or host forums off of their computers (or the CS lab computers) and the word will get out about where folks can go to be "on the internet" between dusk and dawn.
Of course, there's always game systems, iPods, and off-campus wireless networks for people to use.
The best thing to do would be to raise the requirements for classes, thus forcing people to have to study more, and require participation in an extra-curricular activity as a requirement for graduation. Or you could just realize that socialization patterns are changing and deal with it.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
$ du -hLs /home/daeg/porn /home/daeg/porn
/home/daeg/school /home/daeg/school
18G
$ du -hLs
29M
Ack! Quick, everyone symlink your porn directory into your school directory!
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.
Except most of my studying comes from online resources. Oh fuck, I don't have access to the JAVA API, shit I can't get to suns site now. I've got some work to do and I need to go look some stuff up in the crypto. To bad thanks to asshats like you I can't do that now. Shit?!? Something is wrong with my IDE. Oh fuck, I can't go get another copy because I can't get to Borlands site.
You pay for the access, you can do what ever the hell you want with it. I pay a technology fee which covers my access. I'm paying, I get to do what I want with it as long as I don't harm the universities network environment. I've read the contract very thoroughly.
You mad
Several years ago I had a (relatively short) spat of addiction to Neverwinter Nights. During a random conversation with my online mates one night, I was rather shocked to discover that most of them were in college. I myself had graduated college several years ago and had solid high-salary job. My Neverwinter hobby/addiction was just a brief fascination --- something to do in between girlfriends.
There is so much studying and socializing to do while in college, I honestly can't imagine playing any online game during college. That is why I was shocked --- I was like, what the FUCK are you doing playing Neverwinter Nights? We had been playing around 4 hours a day. College is a key time to improve oneself, and they had been squandering that time. While I was squandering my own time as well, the difference was that the impact on my life was one hell of a lot less (negligible, in fact).
Life needs more saving throws.
Theres this thing called the interweb which is kinda integral to studying, my final year presentation is coming up and I want things perfect one of the best resources for my project is actually online (www.8052.com) so smart alecs like you kill my access at 10pm and suddenly when I hit a problem what do I do. Oh and BTW I'm currently working on this thing from 9am to 2am and have been for two weeks (project from hell, when something can go wrong it has) by your logic I'm a whiney uni boy instead of a nearly burnt out from working on this project student. My university provides free unlimited access but blocks ports associated with filesharing, this solution kills most online games and yet allows students to work from 9am to 2am.
Oh and the thing is college and university student are adults, if you treat them like children how are they going to cope in the real world? A university policy of asking students not to engage in illegal activites or do things which could be offensive to others (while detailing how said offended person should react) is more than enough, more than likely Bombay doesn't like its bandwidth bills and so it cutting back
What does one do during "late night browsing" that doesn't involve "touching the hard drive"? Eh?
"Let's face it, it's a good story. Accuracy would kill it."
I don't think I would attend a school that tried to restrict my internet access or had a poor infrastructure. If I'm going to school, and paying a fortune to attend, I expect to have access to every tool I might need any time I might need it (barring physical limitations).
By the time you reach college you should be self sufficient enough to manage your own affairs. If your not, you deserve what you get (fail/get pregnant/have a kid/get arrested/etc). It's not the schools place to babysit the students at this level.
Bravo!
... 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.
You pegged it perfectly. It's the GRADES that matter. If someone is bright and gets their work done,
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.
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I'm at IIT-Bombay student, so I can answer that. There haven't been enough computers in labs for *years*, and the authorities have only been sitting on their ass. The ones that are there are down as often as they're up, and many machines are underpowered. And one of our labs is not air-conditioned and gets blistering hot in the summer...
So we buy our own systems. And now they turn off network access at nights. Great going.
Most of us need all-night access before submissions, and to work on our projects, etc. Not to mention keeping in touch with people over chat. One of my friends who works on GNOME is really pissed because he chats in the night over IRC. Not to mention that IRC is blocked (he ssh-tunnels).
The network is absolutely essential for academics.
OTOH, most of us spend all our time in front of computers. I did. I've done little in the last two years off the computer. When I came here, I was very happy and thought that with my own computer and 24/7 network access, I'll do a lot of programming. But two years after that, I've done zero programming. Only wasted much of my time watching Star Trek, reading reddit, digg and slashdot... We're addicted and only now beginning to realize the problem. And same is the case for many, many students. I have to wonder -- if I'm complaining about not having network access for 9 hours in the night (11 to 8), something's wrong with me.
So they're hurting academics for, say, 2% of people who genuinely need access at night, while de-addicting a much larger number of people and improving our quality of life. Should the university do that? They're in a lose/lose situation. Turn off the network and they're accused of screwing with academics, or they'll be hundreds of students who have no life to speak of. Personally I'd treat students as adults and give them the freedom to do good work, realizing that most will only waste their time, but I can see why IIT-Bombay is doing this.