Korea Requires Camera Phone To Add Shutter Sound
N-Gage Hacked?

Are Universities Too Close With The Tech Companies Who Donate?

Culture

from the conflict-of-interest? dept

Tue, Nov 11th 2003 9:21am — Mike Masnick
An interesting look at the large tech companies who donate money, equipment and software to universities, and whether or not it unfairly biases university curricula in their favor. At the heart of this matter, of course, is Microsoft, who has donated a ton of money to colleges and universities. The universities defend the relationships, saying, basically, that the money is needed - and the companies doing the donating tend to be the technologies that people need to know in order to get jobs after they graduate. In the end, that seems to be the core issue. If the point of the education is to help students get jobs after they graduate, and learning this technology can help them do that, then there isn't a huge problem. If the point, though, is to learn the basic skills across a broad range of technologies, so that they can take that education and go in different directions with it, then the deals may be problematic. Figuring out the right balance is important.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

6 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    NetmanagerTech, 11 Nov 2003 @ 10:29am

    Penn State

    Don't forget to add Penn State to the list. Several of the Board of Regents belong to the RIAA and pushed Napster onto their students without asking them. Check out this piece at The Register: Penn State's pigopolist pork is not smelling sweet

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Mark, 11 Nov 2003 @ 11:16am

    skillz

    I find the "necessary skills" argument to be, in a word, ridiculous. There may be people out there who land jobs because they know how to use Office apps, but those are marginal hires -- the people at the very bottom of the pecking order. I assume today's college students are shooting a little higher than that. I've interviewed several people for jobs where computer proficiency was important, but never have we discussed computer skills, because simple ability to use software is something you can pick up in a couple days. The real skills we were looking for were in other areas -- intelligence, ability to communicate effectively, ability to be creative and self-directed; none of these had anything to do with knowledge of Word's menus. The notion that you need to spend your college years using Windows apps in order to compete in today's market is self-serving drivel that originates in Redmond.

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    dorpus, 11 Nov 2003 @ 1:22pm

    As opposed to unix?

    In an earlier era, unix companies couldn't possibly have donated money and equipment to universities to make them use unix, could they? And there couldn't possibly be compatibility problems of porting applications from one university to the next, could there?

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Nov 2003 @ 1:53pm

    Re: As opposed to unix?

    In an earlier era, unix companies couldn't possibly have donated money and equipment to universities to make them use unix, could they?

    Are you trying to make a claim or a point with the above question?

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    kai, 11 Nov 2003 @ 4:22pm

    No Subject Given

    Well, Microsoft has given a lot of money to MIT but most people here still love unix and hate Microsoft. I heard when Gates visited here to give a speech earlier, he gave out free copies of software, and the students took the CD's out of their cases and threw them frisbee like at him.

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    aNonMooseCowherd, 11 Nov 2003 @ 11:37pm

    the purpose of universities

    Where did the idea come from that universities are supposed to be vocational schools? Going to a university to learn ephemeral skills is a waste of everyone's time. The faculty has better things to teach, and people who need to learn these things can find better places to learn them than at a university.

    Learning how to think logically is an asset that will last a lifetime. Learning all the latest frobs of Microsoft Office Whatever will be useless in a couple of years, because everything will have changed.

    [ link to this | view in thread ]


Korea Requires Camera Phone To Add Shutter Sound
N-Gage Hacked?
Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

Friday

19:39 Important Announcement: Techdirt Is Migrating To A New Platform (0)
More arrow

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.