Amar Bose To Donate Company To M.I.T.

MBC1977 writes with this eyebrow-raising news from CNN: "'The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced Friday that [Amar] Bose, the 81-year-old founder of the sound system company that bears his name, has donated the majority of Bose Corp.'s stock to the school.' Very cool indeed!"

Comments

Midrange

[Wyatt Earp]

Maybe they'll be able to get BOSE to make equipment that is testable for reviews and has some midrange.

Re:Midrange

[MoonBuggy]

You probably didn't mean anything deep by it, but I find the choice to lump universities under the broad heading of 'charity' an interesting one. Although I think there's little better use for one's money than promoting education, my time spent at a (fairly well-regarded) American university seemed (to my godless commie foreign eyes) a surprisingly commercialised experience. It's clear just from looking at the campus that an awful lot of money is given back by alumni, and this action by Bose further confirms it, but I don't think I could ever get over the voice in the back of my head saying "What about all those times you tried to screw me out of every penny I didn't have?".

I applaud the efforts of people like Bose in giving something back, and I know this is something of a digression. It just seems odd, from my external perspective, that people are happy giving such vast gifts to organisations that treat their students in such a mercenary manner; or, I suppose, that organisations receiving such vast gifts still feel the need to squeeze their students so much...

Re:Midrange

[bromoseltzer]

There are many ways to look at a university. It's about research, it's about federal funding, it's about raising money from alumni, it's about patent licensing and athletics, it's about recruiting faculty, promoting faculty, about running a big physical plant, internet pipes, etc. etc. Oh, and there are students, too. Teaching is just one of many things that happen there, not the most visible - even at places that claim to emphasize the student experience. Students do get to pay up to around $200K for the privilege of becoming alumni and then being asked to contribute cash. But a big research university actually loses money on every student. They'd be better off financially if they stopped admitting.

Universities, most of them, are non-profit corporations. You're right they aren't charities in the moral sense, but the US tax laws treat them as if they were. Pity the legislator who suggests repealing the their charitable tax deduction.

Re:Midrange

[Russianspi]

I totally agree. My wife and I both graduated with BA's from Christian colleges. She had the typical college finance experience, with the school squeezing every penny that they could out of her, and then sending letters to her (probably for the rest of her life) asking for donations. She liked the school otherwise, but that (although typical) was/is irksome.

I, on the other hand, went to Moody Bible Institute. It is a college that aims to prepare people to do full-time Christian ministry. Since most of these graduates wind up in fields that don't have great earning potential, they don't charge tuition. I'll repeat that: they don't charge tuition. It's not an easy school to get in to, (it's certainly not for everyone) and it is by no means perfect, but it was the right fit for me. (I'm a missionary, but I'm up late tonight doing some open source coding and getting distracted by Slashdot.) Anyway, Moody avoids charging tuition by having a profitable publishing house, as well as a radio station and broadcast media company. All of the profits that they turn from these (as well as some hefty donations) are what keep the financial wheels turning at the school. When I graduated in 2005, they estimated that for my graduating class, the waived tuition amounted to a $78,000 scholarship per graduating student.

I receive letters occasionally from Moody asking for donations, and these are MUCH more easy for me to stomach. I don't have much in the way of spare money at the moment, but if/when I have the means, supporting Moody is something I'd like to do. I appreciate my education, and the fact that I could get through it without taking out ANY student loans, and I'd love to help present that opportunity to others if at all possible.

Anyway, I realize that I'm on a tangent, but I think that Moody Bible Institute is as close to a true non-profit as I've seen any university be.

Re:Midrange

[gwstuff]

It makes more sense if you weigh the substantial tuition fees against what you get out of a university like MIT in terms of knowledge and the capacity to be successful. The people you speak of, Bose being an example, think the balance tilts towards the latter and try to even it out by giving back to the system. I find it admirable.

Re:Midrange

[demonlapin]

Although I think there's little better use for one's money than promoting education

Too bad that universities are largely in the business of granting degrees, not educating.

Re:Midrange

[MoonBuggy]

A fair point, and it is admirable, but it's perhaps worth clarifying that I wasn't only referring to tuition (substantial though it is, the aforementioned godless commie government helped me out a lot in that regard) - I can't imagine living with a commercial loan of that size like so many Americans do, but it's straightforward and clear, it's like the sticker price on the education one receives.

The bit that was unexpected, the bit that really made me think "These guys are in it for the money", was the (sometimes petty, sometimes substantial) hidden costs enforced by university policies. All first years had to live on campus, in housing with rents a good 40%+ above other local options. Many housing plans came with mandatory pre-paid meal plans: distinctly average cafeteria food at rates that work out to $12/meal; an effort to donate all unused pre-pay meals to charity was deemed too costly to implement. Student run societies needed to go through bureaucratic approval in order to purchase food for events from any sources other than the university's private catering contractor. Not only did courses require $70+ textbooks, the campus book store tended to sell them at rates a good 20% higher than Amazon.

It's beginning to sound like I had a real problem with the place, and that's absolutely not the case. I learned a huge amount and there were parts of the American system that I would love to see adopted in England. It's just jarring to go in expecting a public service organisation, albeit one with a significant up-front cost, and instead find the administration to be treating you as a captive audience of customers.

Re:Midrange

[damiam]

Just curious, what school did you go to? My experience from friends at wide range of schools is that there are a lot of mid-tier American schools which do make an effort to squeeze their students dry, but the schools at the very top tend to be wealthy enough (thanks to alumni donations) that they can afford to have very generous financial aid policies. MIT in particular is one of only six American schools that do need-blind admissions for all students and which guarantee to meet full financial need (the others are Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Amherst). That means that no one at MIT looks at how much money you have when they decide whether to admit you, and once you're admitted you're guaranteed whatever financial aid is necessary to allow you to attend based on your family's financial documents. I think MIT's financial aid policies are slightly less generous than, say, Harvard, which is actually free if your family earns under $60k/yr, but that's only because Harvard's endowment is more than three times as large.

Basically, the argument that schools like MIT make to their alumni is that when you donate to MIT, you're not giving your money to a large faceless entity with a $8 billion endowment staffed with administrators who light their cigars with $100 bills. You're giving it to a poor kid from the slums of Bangalore who is able to come to MIT and fulfill his/her potential because of generous alumni like you, who have allowed MIT to provide a $300k education for free to anyone who can qualify. Obviously you can believe this sort of thing to varying degrees, but apparently Bose's experiences working at MIT for several decades came to convince him that it is, as an institution, overall a force for good in the world.

Re:Midrange

[HuguesT]

To get the "message" that they are losing money on every students, Universities pull accounting tricks worthy of Hollywood. They take all of their expenses, including research and administrative related ones on the one hand, they take what students pay on the other, totally ignoring donations, and they say, "eh, student tuition is only one third of our income, therefore student are actually not paying much at all".

In reality, some studies have shown that top-level college education really costs no more than about $40k per year per student for engineering, about $80k for medicine, and sometimes as lows as $10k for maths or philosophy. Law is also cheap. If students pay $200k over 4 years, they are totally covering that. In most of Europe, students typically pay less than $10k per year, sometimes much less. Oxford and Cambridge charge about $15k per year. They seem to be doing quite well nonetheless. As it was reported here not so long ago, even top-level US-universities pay their professors a relative pittance compared with other professionals with similar qualifications.

If universities stopped admitting, they would immediately lose 1/3 of their funding, and so would have to let go of a corresponding share of their staff. They would lose their status and soon all of their donations, losing another 1/3, later they would lose all of their network and influence obtained through alumni, professors would not be needed for teaching and soon the place would be an empty, nearly pointless shell. That doesn't sound like being better off financially.

The morals is that Universities are there for teaching, and students are at the very center of their mission. Research and whatnot is indeed nice, but it is there to attract funding and top-level researcher, ensuring the quality of the teaching because beginner teachers want to join their teams and so work hard to get tenure. A few top-level researchers are also dedicated and excellent teachers, which is very nice from the university point of view, because they get to write the classical textbooks on their field, ensuring more revenues. Students and alumni are not the only teaching-related income universities get. There are many other things to say, but I'll stop.

However, saying that universities would be better off without students is utter bollocks, to be polite.

Re:Midrange

[Xeranar]

MIT is a wonderful place. I almost went there in the early 2000s before opting for a local school that was 7th in engineering (my preferred fields). They were far more willing to work with me on the tuition rates than the school I did choose and MIT was 4 times more expensive at the time. Right off the top MIT gave a half-tuition credit to those they sought out (as to those that simply applied) and then there was further reward if you succeeded. MIT is not a private school and operates largely for the good of humanity. Comparing your local college experience to MIT is really unfair. The only places I can think of that compete are places like Cal Poly Tech and a few other Tech schools in the US. Giving the stock to MIT means they'll have a healthy steady source of income that hopefully will enable them to continue to research when politics pressure their research funds. PS: On the subject of tuition the US has relatively high tuition because schools don't get the kind of funding they need from the state and private schools though non-profit in most cases need to have an excess to invest and protect against the future. Non-profit doesn't mean sum-zero, it means there is no dividend to pay out to trustees and they are limited in their total profits. State colleges by comparison are much cheaper and would be free if the state gave the proper kind of funding they deserved.

Re:Midrange

[donscarletti]

I think someone pursuing missionary work probably has too much of a conscience to get rich on a "ministry business". Like saying that since the mob bosses who control sanitation in some Italian cities are rich, garbage disposal is a good career path.

Re:Midrange

[thermopile]

I agree completely with HuguesT, above. The notion that universities are "just barely scraping by" is absurd.

College Tuition has been rising at about twice the rate of inflation over the past ten years. If you look at Harvard's endowment, they could easily pay every student's tuition based on extremely conservative returns on their 26 billion investment.

Colleges and universities are a racket. Few other industries, as a whole, have experienced the same kind of wholesale constant increase in funds like the education market.

Well, except for the defense industry, but that's another story.

To get back on topic, donating voting shares to MIT would have been a very interesting opportunity for students -- they would get to run the company, and learn all about the real-world application of technology. Alas, with dividends only, I'm not sure there's as much education going on as there could have been.

Misleading headline

[Josh Triplett]

The headline makes this story sound more sensational than the reality. MIT doesn't get any control over the company, just a pile of dividend-bearing stock.

Re:Misleading headline

[samwichse]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-voting_stock

Re:Misleading headline

[omz13]

MIT get a donation of non-voting shares and they can live off dividends (if there are any). They are not allowed to sell them. They don't get control of BOSE, they don't get any say in how its run.

A sound decision indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I also wish MIT could open-source the designs and IPs of Bose for
the greater good of the audio world.

Re:A sound decision indeed

[larry bagina]

Good idea. It will tell everybody what not to do.

No highs, no lows, Bose.

Caltech

[RockoTDF]

Something tells me that using Bose equipment is going to be taboo at caltech in the coming years.

Re:Caltech

[Surt]

No one at Caltech has to use Bose, they can build their own that are better. It's really just MIT that gets an improvement from upgrading to Bose.

Re:Caltech

[FleaPlus]

No one at Caltech has to use Bose, they can build their own that are better.

Curiously enough, there used to be a Caltech project class based on pretty much exactly that, although it's unfortunately no longer offered:

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~musiclab/

As a bit of trivia, Caltech alum Bill Gross actually ended up founding GNP Audio based on an engineering project he did as a student. He later went on to co-found, like, a gajillion other companies.

And the link?

[TubeSteak]

Is it just me, or did Timothy manage to strip out TFA between the firehose and the front page?

http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/29/technology/bose_mit_donation/index.htm

Nice, but not so nice

[dachshund]

MIT has done wonderful things for the world. As have many academic institutions. But this is as good a time as any to note that making large donations to an elite academic institution is a pretty ineffective way to use your money.

MIT is already well funded, and while this money may go to fund additional research, it may also just lead to a lot of pretty buildings going up. If you have the opportunity to donate, why not donate to a school that will use the money to dramatically increase the number of students it educates, or to a charity that sees the money directed into existing research initiatives that need it.

I'm sure the new Bose facilities will be very nice and the Bose family will have no problem getting into MIT for the next few generations. Nonetheless, it seems like a bit of a waste.

Re:M.I.T. already has an $8 billion endowment.

[Sulphur]

Why not give it to a school or schools that actually deserve the money?

FTFY

Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

These are non-voting, unsellable shares.
MIT only gets the dividends.

Bose quality

[FTL]

True story: An elderly gentleman walked into an electronics store in Toronto looking to buy speakers. The salesman showed him a couple of different models. The customer pointed at another set on the shelves and asked about them. The salesman said "Oh, those are Bose, they're crap." The customer was Amar Bose.

Re:Bose quality

[Swarley]

While the bumper sticker Bose trashing you've been hearing here is pretty much accurate, if you read serious reviews you'll find that the universal gripe with Bose isn't really their sound but their value. They don't sound bad so much as they sound just as good as equipment costing a third as much money, and they sound considerably worse than almost anything else you could buy at the same inflated price. So you're suggestion that they sound damn good at a mid range price seems like you haven't done much comparison listening. You basically hit a bullseye on Bose greatest weakness as a product and called it a strength. Spend 5 minutes with Google "best speakers for $X" where X is what you spent on those over priced Bose speakers and you'll find a giant pile of simultaneously better and cheaper equipment. Take the $350 you spent on pretty much anything Bose and get some Audioengine A5's instead.

Re:Bose quality

[thegarbz]

Everyone is bad mouthing Bose, but they have damn good sound at a mid range price. All my friends love my little Bose system in my kitchen.

May I suggest you actually go and do a bit of listening, not to opinions but actual system. The problem your statement is that they don't even remotely make damn good sound. Their high end system has no midrange, destroys soundstaging, and sounds like the retarded echo effects mimicking stadiums or cinemas that you can enable in Realtek Audio Manager on pretty much every computer.

Bose is aesthetically pleasing, but way overpriced garbage in terms of any real sound quality. (not being able to make a duff duff sound from a small system does not a high quality system make), and I far prefer the look and sound of the Tivoli Model One in my dining room and have change left over :-)

*** This post contains personal opinion.

Re:Mutually exclusive

[mcescalante]

Yes, audiophiles all love to argue about Bose's shortcoming with audio because their systems are greatly overpriced. I personally consider myself an audiophile, and I have no issue with Bose, although I wouldn't buy it as the system for my home theater / audio rig. It's just too damn expensive for the sound you're getting. Guarantee you could find 20 different opinions of what is wrong with Boses sound from audiophiles, all different.

Re:Here's to hoping ....

[secretcurse]

I'm a white male starting my PhD in the fall and I'm getting more money from the state of Arkansas than a foreigner would because I'm an Arkansas resident. I also had my undergrad degree fully funded by a state scholarship (to the tune of around $80,000). My university is practically begging locals to pursue a PhD. My foreign colleagues generally have to pay full retail and don't get the federally backed student loans my wife is relying on for her AuD. By the time I finish my PhD, it's looking like my state will have paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $250,000 to educate me. I'm thankful for that and plan on living in Little Rock for the rest of my life so my taxes can help future students.

Re:Lows for the size

[ColdWetDog]

Among self-contained radios as small as a Wave music system, can you recommend one with better lows?

Just tune to pretty much any Country / Western channel. That'll bring you down.

Citation plz

[tepples]

True story

What's your source, may I ask?

Non-cumulative Preferred Stock

[alexander_686]

Just to put a finer point on it, it sounds like non-cumulative Preferred Stock [a type of non voting stock with very few rights].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_stock

Re:Mutually exclusive

[Jafafa Hots]

The problem with Bose radios is they need green ink on them to improve the sound quality.

http://www.malcolmsteward.co.uk/?page_id=504

(Warning - link is NSFAS Not safe for the allergic to stupid)

Re:Monster expensive?

[beernutz]

Monster 1 meter hdmi cable = $99

Monoprice 6Ft hdmi cable = $2.78

So, yes, monster cables are EXTREMELY expensive.

Can't RTFA

[Paradise Pete]

I see that slashdot has added a new feature of simply omitting any link, presumably for the e-z convenience of not RTFA.

Re:Mutually exclusive

[ChrisMaple]

It depends upon the model. Speaking of speaker systems only, some used resonance to produce boomy base to impress the rubes, leaving inadequate response at deep base and low-mids.

Other speakers, particularly the long-time top-of-the-line 901s, used active compensation to extend the somewhat flat range as far to the high and low as practical. Bose used 9 cheap 5" drivers in each 901, with the result that decent response up to 20 kHz was impossible, as was low distortion and good response at 20 Hz. Due to the complication of having all those drivers and the active compensation box, A.G.Bose claimed (in the class he taught) that the profit margin on the 901s was actually quite small, and the claim seems almost reasonable to me.

Professional speaker designers at more reputable firms joke that Bose's slogan "better sound through research" should read "better sales through advertising".

The fact is that speakers that sound good in isolation appeal to large numbers of uncritical listeners, and that's where Bose does well. A competent critical listener, or someone in a position to A-B against similarly priced reputable brands, will find Bose lacking.

Re:M.I.T. already has an $8 billion endowment.

[ChrisMaple]

Bose has a long relationship with MIT. For many years he competently taught a class on acoustics, using Leo Beranek's text.

Re:Monster expensive?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more expensive because it uses SI, which makes it sound better than Monoprice's imperial cable.

Re:Lows for the size

[thegarbz]

Take a look at anything from Tivoli audio like the Model One. They have a downfiring port so placing them on a wooden table helps even more. But I was absolutely blown away by how much better they sound and look (retro) than the Bose crap.

Re:Here's to hoping ....

[TheRaven64]

I think you'll find that most American universities do primarily fund American students. I did my PhD in a UK university, but I spent three months in a US university on a collaboration, and from what people said it seems like the funding situation is pretty similar, although not quite the same:

In the UK, the university charges tuition fees for PhD students. These have two rates, one for EU citizens (government subsidised) and one for everyone else (full price). This covers lab space, lecturer time, and so on - the university skims about 50% off before it gets to the department, to cover general university overheads. Most PhD student places for EU citizens come with a grant, either from a government grant, an industrial partnership, a charitable trust, or the university itself. This covers all of the tuition fees, travel expenses, and provides a stipend (tax free income). I don't even know exactly what my tuition fees were - they were paid from the grant and I never saw the bill - while my colleagues from Malaysia (for example) were having to pay a huge amount every year. I was paid a stipend which worked out to about the same as an entry level graduate salary after tax, and claimed around £10K or so in travel expenses, while they had to pay for everything.

One of the reasons why the tuition fees were so high for foreign students was that this money was used to subsidise other PhD places. For every 2-3 non-EU students we got, the university could afford to fund another PhD. This is why you see so many foreign students - the UK and USA are both regarded as prestigious places to do a PhD in much of Asia, so our universities encourage them to apply. Once they're here, the universities charge them a lot and use this to subsidise everyone else. Send them all back home, and you'll see a lot fewer PhD places available for locals.

Re:Monster expensive?

[Rakshasa Taisab]

You're underestimating the impact on quality due to imperial units... Just look at the Mars prove that crashed due to ignoring the obvious benefits of SI based data channels.

Re:Monster expensive?

[swalve]

True, but cables aren't about making something sound better. They are about transmitting a signal without losing any of it. Shitty cables can make the digital signal harder for the receiving component to decode and force it to go into error correction/compensation mode. A couple of bad bit-flips might make the signal drop, that's easy. But less-bad bit flips can change the signal without ruining it, leading to badness.