Maybe they could finally offer graduate-level classes online like what Stanford does with SCPD or Georgia Tech with OMS CS... So far one had to be in Boston physically.
MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester
371–380 of 605 posts
Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester
#372Imagine paying $50,000+ a year for education that provides no labs, no campus experience, and no personal interaction with other students and professors.... Now imagine that 50k a year landlord telling you to pack your shit and get out in 2 weeks.
Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are certainly restaurants nearby, but not sure I'd call them cheap. I imagine a lot of MIT students don't have the money to eat out every day. And since most dorms don't have any kind of kitchens or cooking implements, buying food from the grocery and cooking isn't really an option. Pre-made meals or other things from grocery stores that don't require cooking could work, but, again, I'd expect some/many student…
At my college all the dorms had a kitchen for residents to use in the basement... is this not normal?
We had a kitchen and hundreds of people. Dorms are not designed for students to regularly cook, and even if they were, a shared kitchen seems even less sanitary than a meal hall
Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not an epidemiologist, but a Boston resident. Generally, people under 30 completely ignore anything about the coronavirus here. You have people hitting a different nightclub each night, going to parties, and that sort of thing. A college town full of students who see their risk as 0.1% is not what you want right now. Now, a more sensible thing might be to close the nightclubs, bars, and parties. But the city hasn't d…
So you have tens of thousands of people, who all have been in close proximity, now exposing their risk to their family. And if these college students have any elderly family members, that could pose a serious risk. By forcing people to go home, rather than shelter in place, everyone has increased contact with others and public infrastructure where the virus could be.
It's almost like MIT is acting in the best interests of their own public relations image, as opposed to the community at large.
Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but the dining halls are being closed for the same reason as the dorms. If not for the coronavirus then neither closure would be happening. In other words, it's not like the dining halls are being closed and then as a consequence the dorms are being closed for lack of food options.
This whole chain of comments started out with the following prompt: >In what way are dorms worse than personal homes for diseases anyway? Are they not trusting their students to prepare their own food? Why don't they just close the dining halls instead? Dining halls are inherently a highly trafficked gathering of a large group of people. That is exactly the type of things people are being instructed to avoid. It is l…
All of that applies to dorms too, maybe even worse because the close quarters are for much longer periods of the day. You've got multiple people living in the same room in dorms, and sharing all the common areas. That's a great vector for spreading disease. The dorms are closing for exactly the same reason as the cafeterias are, not because the cafeterias are closing first and now students have nothing to eat.
Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are too quick to try to apply law governing private parties to governments and other similar institutions. Schools and universities can do a lot of things differently than, say, a private company can.
MIT is a private university, not public.
That is, to a large degree, a distinction without a difference. Large US research universities are more similar than different in most aspects including status as legal entity and (perhaps more important in practice) in how society sees them.
Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if it's fair to compare MIT to Italy. Italy has a very aging population and MIT is very young and Boston has some of the best healthcare in the country.
"and Boston has some of the best healthcare in the country." I hear people say that all the time of all sorts of places, but what does that mean? Does Boston have (beyond some baseline) more respiratory aid machines than other places? More virus or respiratory system specialists? Better or more nurses? If they do, why? It doesn't matter if they have a bunch of world class brain surgeons. I'd imagine the area would ha…
Totally agree. Massachusetts has some of the best healthcare in the country if you specifically benefit from some of the research going on at Mass General or another research hospital. But even then, just going to Mass Gen for a respiratory infection won't really let you benefit from the concentration of expertise. You just need 02, possibly a tube, and attention from non-sick healthcare workers.
Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester
#378One of my coworkers daughters is affected by this. The big question this begs: If there is no refund being offered for the content shifting online from in-person, why have in-person at all? Is room and board going to be refunded? If courses being taught online is an acceptable substitute, why have caps on admission at all? Edit: Understood that infinite sized classes aren't workable for human intensive grading, inter…
I don't think anyone believes online is an acceptable substitute to a traditional MIT education, but it's a lot better than nothing, and better than continuing the in person teaching. I'm an MIT grad and know the benefits of being on campus. In fact I spent more time in the lab than I did in classes or my dorm and that just isn't possible online. My son's school (Courant) has sent everyone home too, with online subst…
Would you have paid 50k+ a year for an online education without the interaction you get from being part of the MIT campus a facilities and faculty?
Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
US colleges earn money off the meal plan and tend to be liability shy so having a full kitchen is a non-starter. Heck, it was against the rules to have a microwave in dorms (even room not in actual dorms) where I went to college. It was a pain in the butt.
Pretty sure the ban on microwaves was an electrical fire risk, not them being predatory about students eating at the dining hall. Can you imagine if even every other room had an appliance pulling 1000W whenever the hell a student felt like warming up some soup?
> Can you imagine if even every other room had an appliance pulling 1000W whenever the hell a student felt like warming up some soup?
Imagine apartment buildings existing
Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester
#380lol its the flu