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RIP the Campus Computer Lab, 1960-2009
theodp writes "When every student has a laptop, why run computer labs? That's a question schools have been asking themselves as computer ownership rates among incoming freshmen routinely top 90%. After only four freshmen showed up at the University of Virginia in 2007 without a computer of their own, the school decided that it's no longer worth the expense of running campus computer labs. Student computer labs have been a staple of campus life since the '60s. So what are the benefits that will be missed as other schools follow UVa's lead?" The university's report notes understanding that "that students need collaborative space where they can bring their laptops and mobile devices to conduct group work, especially as the curriculum becomes increasingly team- and project-based." One of the spaces formerly occupied by computer labs "has been transformed into a technology-rich collaboration area."
I lack a printer, and thus I rely on the University's printing capabilities. I'm sure I'm not the only one; many students appear to have their own computers, but seem to rely on the University for printing off papers or projects.
As a present college student, I have to say that I still spend hours in computer labs. I use a SunRay lab as a controlled development environment for computer science, and I have math class in a computer lab loaded with Maple and Mathematica. There's an open-access computer lab near me that I also use frequently to access necessary software, to use as a meeting place for group projects, or to use as a printer when I can't use mine for whatever reason.
Mind you, it's not like I don't have a computer on campus, but I still find myself using computer labs very frequently. And I know other people do too, the labs are almost always full when I'm in them. If labs die in 2009, it's not students' laptops that did it.
When I ran one, it was a lab of Linux machines running Matlab and a bunch of other software that most student machines wouldn't have. The computer lab was extremely useful for the students. I expect that you'll continue to see labs being used for anything that isn't common on a student's computer. (Video editing, 3D animation, Matlab, anything with specialty software), or for computer skills courses. Teaching excel is a lot easier when everybody is looking at the same version.
Sure, if it's just being used for web browsing and checking email, a computer lab may be much less useful now than it was ten years ago. Still, I think the social aspect of a computer lab shouldn't be overlooked. I expect that you'll soon see a movement of "micro computer labs" the size of a conference room with something like 3-6 computers, a conference table, and a white board, maybe a projector. Extremely useful for group projects, and things like that, but also useful by a group of completely random individuals as a small computer lab.
A PHB fills a room with couches and cheap avant-guard office furniture, and it's the end of computer labs? Computer labs will stay with us, for the simple reasons that there will aways be students unable to afford laptops, and computers are required to complete coursework these days. Not to mention the convenience being able to check email or print stuff without having to lug around a laptop all the time.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
[Troll]
A place where Business Major girls can go to find CompSci geeks to do their Programming for Non-majors assignments for them...
[/Troll]
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
When your laptop goes kablooey all of a sudden, it's darned handy to have a few machines around as a backup so you can type your Important Paper. You don't need hundreds, sure, but what's a couple dozen computers to a big fancy university?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Sure, this is fine for private schools, but at a lot of public universities a large amount of students are broke and trying to pay their own way through school. Getting rid of the computer lab would be a huge handicap for them, so I just don't think this would be feasible for other campuses
I completly disagree with the removing of computer labs and i would just point two issues:
a) Freshman can have a portable, but they don't have the array of servers that currently are needed for a complete CS courseware. How do they program in cluster computers, clustered database servers and so on? Yes, you may be able to skip on the ton of personal computers, but you will still need the IT infrastructure to support a proper learning experience;
b) It is not appropriate to ask every freshman to ditch hard coin for a program just to learn something. In that case, the usual setup is for the school to have a computer room with computers and all the programs required. Also bear in mind that many programs aren't exactly instalable on a portable computer...
So yup... you may be right that the "need" for perssonnal computers aren't currently that great, but nope, computer labs will always be needed on schools that relate to IT.
Use that money for other, more useful puposes.
Provide (or upgrade) campus-wide wifi, provide an on-campus "geek squad" that actually knows what they're doing, etc.
'a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM DATA WHERE name LIKE '%'... if you're reading this, it didn't work.
When a course requires a certain software package, a consistent install base is crucial for teaching and troubleshooting.
When a system problem can't be solved by having the student move to another workstation while IT is re-imaging a lab computer, weeks of course time and homework can be lost. It is a headache keeping track of excused late assignments.
Not to mention software licensing issues.. It forces the instructor into a legal and moral choice between running the "new & hot" version the students are running and last years license the school purchased. Isn't your highest obligation to teach the students? And don't even start me on instant messaging.
Sure, right now a lot of kids who just graduated from high school can convince their parents that they need their own computer in school (even if the school website says otherwise). Though as the economy continues to falter, parents should start taking a serious look at what their kids truly need for school (and realize that a computer of their own is not on that list).
Spend $1,000 on that new laptop, or instead use the same $1,000 to take out less in student loans? That should be a pretty easy choice.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'm a civil engineering student and throughout my course I had to do a bunch of projects that demanded all sorts of software and although a bunch of that software has a free counterpart (openoffice, latex, maxima, GCC, etc...), we are still forced to use software that not only doesn't have any free counterpart but also costs an arm and a leg to begin with (I'm looking at you, autocad). That alone makes the computer lab to be nothing short of invaluable. That and the fact that my school's computer lab also sells prints.
Then there's the safety aspect. Nowadays I'm able to go to class with nothing more than a pencil, A4 paper, an USB drive. That's about 15 euros worth of stuff. If suddenly I was forced to carry around a laptop then that value would easily surpass the 600 euros mark, all that concentrated on a neat, easily stealable toy.
At my university (specifically, at the Faculty of Electronics, which includes network and systems engineering), this would not work very well, if at all.
First, several absurdly expensive applications like Matlab (yeah, everyone here knows about Octave, but the industry wants students to learn to use Matlab) are available only on the lab servers, and while it's possible to forward the X connection from the server and have them appear on the laptop's desktop (in fact, that's how they work on the lab computers), most Windows-using students can't be bothered even to install and use PuTTY and Xming properly, and even then, using Matlab over a WiFi connection is not for the faint of heart and weak-tempered.
Second, some things are to be accessed only from university-owned computers, such as the IEEE Xplore database and several scientific journals, and there's nothing the university could do about this, it's just how academic licensing works.
There are probably some more cases such as those, so the labs are here to stay for some more time, I think.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
Computer labs won't go away, they will just change their mission. Instead of labs for general computing needs (email, info searches, web browsing), they will become support for specialized computing needs.
They are still needed to provide access to specialized professional applications which would be too expensive for individual students to license. High end scientific, art, media and simulation applications are too expensive or require too much computing power for the average student with a laptop to realistically use.
It's pretty much necessary, though, given limited time. Generally, you want to be teaching concepts, not fiddling with software details, and that's easiest if you just pick one piece of software for the purposes of teaching, and assume people can learn the details of other software on their own. So, for example, if you're teaching C++, you might want to be able to just assume everyone has access to g++ and GNU make, preferably all in the same version, instead of also dealing with XCode and Visual Studio and gcc under Cygwin and god knows what else. The easiest way to do that is just to have a Unix computer lab students have access to.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
One of my favorite professors, Arthur Lo, said of his course:
"Most of my students say that they get the most from this course from the lab exercises. I think that they get the most from their lab partners."
This was back when a computer "lab" really meant a "terminal room." But you could take a quick break, discuss assignments with other students, to make sure that you understood it correctly, ask older students which courses were good, tell younger courses which course sucked.
Computer folks tend to be introverted enough anyway; encourage them to get out a bit, instead of hacking alone in their dorm rooms.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I still find computer labs on campus useful. Some of the reasons have already been mentioned (printing, obscure software licenses, collaboration, etc..).
What I'd like to see more of is docking stations for laptops. USB keyboards and mice, large monitors, no boxen. Its still difficult to get access to these in most labs, they're often locked to the box in an inconvient manner...
The modern computer lab can still have computers, but they should accomodate the fact that many students have their own computers. Just include an actual computer at every other station or something...
Spoken like a true idealist problem solver. Two of my favorite CS classes dealt with circuit design, and we depended heavily on a simulator (LogicWorks - not great, but it does the trick) instead of breadboards. I had to use the computer lab because its were the only computers available that could boot into Windows. Are you really saying that these courses should ditch the simulator, on principle, because classes shouldn't require specific software? Or that any student who finds a different simulator should be able to use it (which introduces all manner of hell for graders)?
I can see the "computer lab" simply evolving to better meet the needs of the modern student.
You're probably going to want to provide some comfortable workspaces where a laptop can be placed, and possibly offer amenities like a USB docking station with full-size keyboard, mouse and 20" or 22" LCD display attached. Network printers should be available as well.
You'd also want to have a number of desktop systems in the lab, loaded with specialized software packages needed for courses - but too expensive to expect students to buy for individual use. (EG. My ex-g/f had to use the SPSS statistical software for several of her psychology courses.)
Computer labs are essential to any good engineering program. The smartest and easiest way to provide access to and support for an array of engineering software is through University run computer labs.
At the University of Michigan, where I attend, there is a huge amount of software that engineering students have access to on any of the CAEN (computer aided engineering network) computers. All my complaints aside, the engineering network is one of the most useful resources. I have a fair amount of University storage space, access to all my files on any CAEN computer, and generally a lot more computing power available than on most student's laptops.
Students will routinely run simulations and analyses on the computers, letting them run overnight, or even days. Above all, without an engineering computer network, student teams, such as Solar Car, FSAE, Baja, etc. would not be able to design, build, and compete on the same level.
A properly run computer network can be a great way to provide access to a huge resource with an array of software otherwise unavailable or too costly for students.
Anyone who spends $1000 on a laptop for school is an idiot. Take notes on paper and build a desktop for $175.
I remember when I first began Engineering at my local university, many of the kids did indeed have laptops. But they're (by and large) laptops running WinXP or some Apple OS. When we began our C course, not one of them knew what gcc was, or how to use XEmacs (which is what the course instructors asked us to use). Even those with laptops used the computer labs throughout the entire term.
Personally, my laptop (running Ubuntu at the time) suffered a hard drive failure during the semester and I'm eternally thankful I had access to the computer labs during that time.
Mechanical engineers need to graduate with hands-on experience with a professional CAD package. Since these are far too expensive for students to buy, and there are no open-source alternatives, universities need to buy the software. When a university is buying CAD software, it makes sense to only buy one package, rather than waste money on several.
Sometimes a course is specifically to teach both concepts and proficiency with a certain software. No way to "fix" the dilemma by eliminating the software without eliminating the course too.
In a class of 150 (with smaller labs) IT issues can crop up weekly. Getting rid of specific software does nothing to offload the responsibility of the school to provide and maintain a functional learning environment. A computer lab setting creates generic "seats" so students can relocate rather than being tied to their own possibly malfunctioning laptop. Students can not afford to have hours of down-time, let alone days.
The licensing issue rears its head when marking because either assignments may be submitted in a software/version/format the school does not have because the student cannot export backwards to earlier versions or to a compatible file format.
In my experience there's a lot of pressure from to get rid of labs in Universities and Colleges simply to reduce costs. At it's core, this is a process of shifting the cost of computing facilities from the institution to the students. And yes, I know that when the institution pays for labs the monies are ultimately coming, at least in part, from the paying students. However, a machine in a student lab is much more highly untilised that an individual's notebook, a cost of labs is spread across all students, rather than the individual, and the economies of scale mean that the cost per unit for the institution is utually much less than the cost per unit in the individual model.
Anyway, two reasons to retain labs:
- some students don't have notebooks. Should ownership of a computer be a prerequisite to obtaining a post-secondary education? I'm sure the vast majority of students have their own desktop or notebook, but the single parent working part-time and supporting two kids while trying to upgrade their credentials might not.
- speciality software (GIS, discipline-specific stuff for psychology courses, math courses, etc.) is pretty damned expensive, and typically has very restrictive licenses in terms of seat installations or concurrent users. Trying to get licensing that allows you to distribute to student PC is tough and expensive. And Microsoft is the biggest prick of them all; they hose you if you try to support virtual labs to give access even to Office applications, insisting that even if your virtual lab supports 50 concurrent users you must purchase a license for every student who could possibly use the service, which is typically in the 1000's.
We're starting to push users toward Open Office (we should have done it a long time ago I suppose, but version 3 is pretty sweet and a step up from previous version IMHO). But the FUD out there makes students hesitant - faculty telling them their work won't be accepted if it is created using anything other than Word, for example, with both the faculty and the student not realising that they are requiring a file format, not the use of a particular program.
Anyway, getting rid of student labs is a boon for Microsoft, and for hardware manufacturers, and hoses marginalised students, while adding yet another barrier to higher ed so that only snotty nosed kids whose parents are paying their way through school can afford to go to university.
Okay, that last part is a little over the top, but not so far - there's truth in there.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
It's a big assumption thinking students can connect to the campus network. I'm using Linux and we're "not allowed" on the network without windows.
Alternative open source solutions certainly have their place, but they're not always appropriate, particularly for courses that rely on audio, graphical or CAD software where knowledge and experience of a specific software package is often expected. Sure, it's fairly easy for a moderately competent user to switch from Word to Writer, and the mathematics doesn't change if you go from Matlab to Octave, but being expected to work with Photoshop at a high level if you've only been trained on Gimp would be surprisingly challenging.
When you know you're going to be thousands in debt whatever you do, it's very easy to end up thinking like that. Everyone knows that they're going to be paying it off for so long that money starts to lose its connection to tangible items.
Where I work (university department) we aren't getting rid of our labs, despite the budget cuts. We really couldn't even if we wanted to. In no small part this is because of software. We have a number of classes that use software that is licensed only for university systems. Sometimes it is licensed only for a select few systems in our department. Thus we can't say "Just use your own computer." We have to provide systems. I suppose in theory it could be terminal server computers or the like, but I don't know that would end up being any cheaper, it takes a fairly large and expensive server to support multiple people running an intense application.
At any rate I can see universities cutting back on labs, but I don't think they are going away any time soon. At least not where I work.
While larger schools may have incoming students with their own laptops, smaller community colleges and colleges with higher percentages of older/non-traditional students will still have need of the local campus computer lab. I attend a small local college of about 1,200 students, many of which are former GM employees. Our campus computer labs are almost always very busy with people typing papers up and so forth. Our campus even utilizes the computer labs for some creative writing and digital photography classes. It seems to me that your particular campus that is shutting down it's computer lab is not considering multiple uses for their labs. It may be they don't need it but still to me it seems as if they are under-servicing their students by not keeping such labs around.
Insert witty sig here.
1) When the software is on the lab computers, uniformity of environment and correctness of the install are something I can count on. Since I always test my assignments on lab machines before I give 'em out, I know there's no problem when I walk into class, because if something didn't work I already had words with the lab staff and got it fixed.
2) If something doesn't work in the lab, it's the lab staff's full time job to make it right. I'm there to teach the students the course content, not as their first line of defense in software support. If something doesn't work on a student's machine, one or more of the student, the class, or me gets hosed and there's very little I can do ahead of time to avoid the issue. If I try to fix it right there in the lab, I open a can of worms. If I change anything in their setup I may be hosing some other piece of software they count on. Meanwhile the rest of the class are twiddling their collective thumbs. If I don't try to fix it, that student gets left in the dust and will almost certainly require one-on-one tutoring later to catch up. On top of that, I'm perceived as unhelpful and unknowledgeable and the student evaluations ream me.
I'll take the campus labs over personally owned student machines, thank you.
3.5 days of work?
Boys and Girls. DON'T WORK IN COLLEGE. It's not worth it. You'll just learn less and get a shittier job.
If you know you're going into a field that pays well. If you know you have the talent and dedication to get hired quickly. If you qualify for student loans. DON'T WORK. I knew so many people in college who worked through college and didn't own a car who now... don't have a job and still work at where they worked in college. In a large part because they would be late to class because of bus schedules. They weren't free for after class studying or group projects because they had to go to work and or catch the last bus of the night and they didn't get very much networking done.
You're already paying 20k+ so what does an extra $5k a year in part time retail do for you? Nothing. It does nothing. Student loans go for 10 years. If $500 helps ensure you'll be employed and skilled out of college then spend the freakin' $500 bucks.
If you make 50k out of college instead of the 13k you currently make working at quickie mart in the evening then paying off your student loans is trivial.
Have a plan.
Stick to it.
Don't waste 50k on tuition if you aren't going to have the time to do the work because you want to save a few grand.
One exception to my "Don't Work in College."
DO WORK IN COLLEGE if it's in your field. If you can get a job in college doing real work then definitely do it. But don't do it for the money. Do it for the experience.
So let me refine my old statement. DON'T WORK RETAIL/FAST FOOD IN COLLEGE.
I don't like the idea of taking away the computer labs and relying on students to bring their own laptops. It's only a very small step from that, to a regime where the university begins dictating very specific requirements about what hardware and software the student is required to have. For starters, the university is probably going to dictate what operating system is being used (no bonus points for guessing it's going to be an operating system sold by a monopolist from the Pacific Northwest who recently made a large "donation" to the uni for influencing that decision). Pretty soon they're also dictating that the uni's custom suite of security programs are loaded, and other things. At the end of the day it's no longer the student's own computer -- it's a locked-down university computer that the student (or his parents) paid for. No thanks.
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In our university, the computer lab division consist of 200+ student employees, working an average of 15 hours per week. In order for a university to eligible for Federal Work-Study funds, there must be at least a certain percentage of students working on campus.
That is how we pay for our tuition, without the problem (especially scheduling and commuting problem) associated with an off-campus job.
New Economic Perspectives
Asked a girl out for a first date while working a shift as the lab assistant. Incredibly, she said yes.
And the date didn't go altogether bad (married 12 years with three kids.)
even back in 1997, was apparently the thing to do for overseas students. I remember being perplexed as to why the lab was so slow when I had heard there were dual oc3 pipes coming into the place.
I was sitting at the back so I had a quick look around and I noticed 99% of the computers were taken up by an asian student all independently streaming the same TV show..
I don't know what the quality rate was, because it appeared to be a asian drama/movie, but whatever it was times about 50 machines would be enough to choke most connections.
Especially since this was one of on about half a dozen labs.
It certainly wasn't collaborative or someone would have gotten them some headphone splitters..
As a current student and teaching assistant at a university computer science department, I see several benefits to having computer labs, including two really big ones.
First, almost all of our courses from the sophomore level on up require development in Linux. Many students use Linux on their personal machines, but many more do not. Most of the students have absolutely no experience with Linux or a command line at all prior to taking their first course that requires it. If a prerequisite to these courses was that you first install Linux on your own computer, I bet that would scare away a bunch of students, especially non-majors who just want to take a couple of courses to help them better understand computing to help their work in other fields.
A second, related benefit to having labs is that you can have a standardized set of development tools. We tell students that they are welcome to use their own computers to complete assignments. However, we will test their programs on a university lab computer, and they should do the same before turning their code in so that they know it will build and run properly during grading.
Most of these problems could be mitigated to a certain extent by providing free use of a standardized Linux VM image, but I for one would rather avoid doing large projects inside an instance of VMWare.
So you got your undergrad degree when you were 28?
That means that at 28, you're making the average salary of a 23 year old. And when you're 40, you'll be at the average salary of a 35 year old. On top of that, when you're 65, you'll be running on 37 years of savings instead of 42. And if you get married and have children in your 30's, you'll have missed out out on the first 5 years - the most important ones - both because your savings have the longest time to grow AND you can save a lot more of your income when you're single than when supporting a family.
A college degree makes you more productive. Delaying that degree makes you more productive later. This makes no sense.
Plus, it's not like you knew how to live like an adult when you graduated high school either. You just didn't learn how to be an adult AND take classes at the same time - so while everyone else pounded that out in 4-5 years, it took you a decade.
Anyway you cut it, your way is just slow.
paintball
Are you going to buy me a Wifi modem for my laptop, Mr. Silver Spoon?
No. You can do it yourself for the back breaking price of $10. Never mind that even the cheapest laptops have wifi built in these days so the wifi adaptor would likely be redundant.
For that matter, are you going to buy me a laptop?
Nope. You'll have to do what I did and take out school loans to buy one. Then you pay for it once you are out of college and gainfully employed. If the extra $300 to buy a low end laptop is going to break you, perhaps you need to reconsider your college financing options.
All I could afford was a minimal desktop PC for $300.
Bullshit. Either you're lying or you didn't look hard enough. If you are that strapped for cash you could even have gotten something used or second hand. Even a brand new laptop can be had for under $300 these days.
You see not everyone is rich, or drives themselves deep-into-credit debt to buy these types of toys.
A laptop isn't a "toy" anymore and you don't have to be rich to own one. $300 isn't going to bankrupt you or if it does you were already near bankruptcy for other reasons.
My college job was working in the computer labs as a technician. I found this to be an invaluable time in my life. I learned how to install applications in a networked and secured environment. It gave me experience in a computing environment that was far more complex than any simple home network could be. It was a great asset to have on my resume when I did have to go out and get a job in the real world. Not to mention that the other student-aid approved jobs were food service, grounds keeping or receptionist/desk clerk. While the number of student employees needed to run the labs is far less than the number of students using the lab; there is still merit in providing a small portion of your student body the opportunity to apply their education while in school.
There was only a single semester when I *needed* the computer lab, and that was the first I had moved off campus. I didn't want to shell out the cash for internet access because, lets face it, I would spend so much time in the CS lab anyway.
The CS lab was linked directly with the department file server, and I had been running linux full time since my sophomore year. As long as I had enough bandwidth to upload a source file, or download the occasional lib file the prof provided, there was no need for me to be in that lab, and on campus bandwidth was plentiful.
So why do it? I liked the company. I didn't like everyone in that department, to be sure, but most of the folks I knew were pretty good guys (and a couple girls), and it was fun swapping stories of funky things we were experiencing on our own systems, problems we were having with our current projects, or the latest interesting story on Slashdot.
I was a TA for most of my college career, but I spent so much time in the lab that the idea of logging my hours was really a joke. I think it was true for just about every one of the upperclassmen (and those who knew what they were doing) that we were always there to help out anyone who asked.
There was a lot to be gained from that experience. The CS lab was a space where we could work with others, where we could serve as mentors, and where we could get a feel for what it might possibly like to work in a room full of other people with a common interest. I shudder to think of what my CS experience would have been like without that space.