

Is MIT Obsolete? - razorburn
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2009/02/is_mit_obsolete.php

======
dgreensp
I spent some time in Gershenfeld's lab while at MIT. He's on to something in
that the machinery and know-how needed to engineer a new kind of robot or
sensor are ready to spread far and wide.

The title is overly provocative, and brings to mind other discussions, some
provoked by PG essays, about the role of universities, the efficacy or
applicability to the real world of different levels of education as they're
currently taught, the practical difference between a good school and a bad
school, whether you should go to grad school, etc. Such discussions tend to
bore me.

Suffice it to say that without MIT, there would be no Fab Labs. Even viewing
MIT as purely a place to educate students, or purely a place to do research,
or purely a place to do engineering, none of which it is, MIT is not in danger
of becoming obsolete any time soon, even with its curriculum publicly
available and its technological resources becoming less scarce.

~~~
dasil003
Yeah the title is total linkbait.

I didn't go to MIT, but I studied Computer Science at the University of
Minnesota which (at the time anyway) used an MIT-based curriculum (eg. first
class is Scheme). When I hear people complaining about their 4-year colleges
teaching Java instead of computer science, I can't help but think of how
important MIT is to me even though I've never even been to Boston.

OpenCourseWare and their embrace of the Fab lab network just serve to confirm
that MIT is embracing change aggressively. It's the polar opposite approach to
what (for example) the music industry has done. There is a need for these kind
of intellectual hubs more so now than ever.

------
sangaya
What's with the sudden surge of articles about higher education going
obsolete? This article isn't even about that. It's that the methods available
to help people learn are in a constant state of flux and that MIT is helping
lead the way with it's Fab Labs.

From the closing of the article: "The MITs of the world are far from obsolete,
but instead of draining brains away from where they are most needed, these
institutions can now share not just their knowledge but also their tools, by
providing the means to create them. Rather than advanced technological
development and education being elite activities bounded by scarce space in
classrooms and labs, they can become much more widely accessible and locally
integrated, limited only by the most renewable of raw materials: ideas."

------
tokenadult
I read the whole interesting article before noticing that the author is
currently affiliated with MIT.

------
chris11
Sure, the internet has made started to make available the ideas and knowledge
of elite institutions. And those institutions will continue to give away more
information and higher quality instruction. It might even get to the point
where information gotten from a professor during class will be about the same
quality of the information gotten from the internet.

But this only helps places like MIT, even in educating the students there. The
internet can't compete with real life in surrounding you with competent and
experienced people. That's probably why people like PG recommend that you move
to Silicon Valley, so that you can surround yourself with successful people
who are doing the same things you are. And MIT giving away information only
increases their brand, which lets them choose from more people.

So that means that if I go to a place like MIT for grad school, I'll know that
I will have surrounded myself with people who are all very knowledgeable about
what I will be doing. I probably won't get that to such a great degree if I go
to a school with very low standards, and I definitely won't get that if I stay
home and study from materials off the internet. It's mostly about the quality
and goals of the people you are surrounding yourself with.

------
zitterbewegung
No, places like MIT and other research universities will survive because they
also are a community of research. Also, most people who are actually using the
Fab lab are associated with research institution. I don't really think that
the masses will start using fab labs anytime soon but possibly in the future.

------
rubentopo
The playing field is much more leveled, but few schools actually recognize
what subjects are valuable to teach (so many go with the latest hype), Joel
put it better in his article:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/article/ThePerilsofJavaSchools...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/article/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html)

