
Support MIT OpenCourseWare - malikNF
https://crowdfund.mit.edu/project/6629
======
gravypod
My first thought was "Wow! Is MIT really in need of this money?" If not are
they're just probing the public opinion on double selling already on hand
material.

    
    
        Endowment: $13.182 billion (2016)
        Academic staff: 1,021
        Students: 11,319
        Undergraduates: 4,512
        Postgraduates: 6,807
        Campus: 168 acres
    

From [1]

For anyone who hasn't worked in academia there are three big funding sources
for a university:

1\. Endowments: Someone donates you money, you put it into a saving/investment
portfolio, and you spend the interest of it. It's continual/perpetual funding
for whatever you want.

2\. Overhead on grants: I'd bet more then half of MIT's money is taxpayer-
funded. MIT has a 54.70% overhead which means that of any grant that anyone on
campus gets only 45.3% goes to real research. (I will say that a 54.7%
overhead is pretty average. My school has a ~60% overhead.)

3\. Last and least, Students: MIT's admission costs are $41,547. That's
$187,460,064 total in from their current undergraduate class. They're still
making money from grad students but it won't be the same amount so I didn't
add them into them mix. You also need to remember for every dollar they take
in from someone, they'll find at least 2 dollars to take in from someone else.
When you go to a college and pay their admission free, you're paying the
subsidized version and the college is getting rich.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Tec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology)

~~~
mathattack
You catch my thoughts here. I'm torn between "This is a great resource, we
should pay for it" and "Does MIT really need any more money?"

This does seem to just be one aspect of their annual fundraising. Donors like
to see their money go to specific targets, and this happens to be a feel-good
one.

~~~
gravypod
My opinion is, if you are an American tax payer, that you already have been
paying for this. If you pay your taxes you pay for the NSF/DARPA/IARPA
programs.

~~~
skosuri
Really? You know NSF/DARPA/IARPA aslo fund private companies like Boeing and
Lockheed. Are you saying you shouldn't have to pay for flights either because
you pay taxes?

------
axonic
I have mixed opinions about OCW but overall I think it is an invaluable
resource. I am presently working through MIT 20.219 Writing and Hosting the
Educational Show (2016, Choe, E.) and 18.006 Calculus Revisited (2010, Gross,
H.). The calc classes are from 1970 so I wondered why they were there. After
watching 3 lectures straight until 0600 and laughing through it, I saw why.
I've also done Harvard CS50x, and many others from various sources. Some
classes are more to sell the school to potential students than to share
knowledge but MIT stays away from that. Self-learning is tricky for some but I
think learning how to learn is as critical as the course content. My learning
has accelerated greatly since studying teaching adult learners and graduate
students. You are your own teacher in a way and must take responsibility for
your own learning outcomes. Politics drive education, many factors influence
the level of commitment from MIT to the OCW program and learners, but I don't
believe that should change the value of the content and if public funding will
keep it online, I support it. I owe them so much for what I've learned from
the MIT culture, its amazing faculty, and the students who help shape the
learning environment. I get called to consult and develop for some of the
biggest companies in the world now and I can be confident in the quality of my
work and what I teach others :) I call that value.

~~~
ivan_ah
Thanks for plugging this 18.006 Calculus:
[https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-006-calculus-
revisited-...](https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-006-calculus-revisited-
single-variable-calculus-fall-2010/index.htm)

Prof Gross is an awesome teacher. The lecture series include a lot of
prerequisite material form high school math so would be great for someone to
get started with math.

------
blcknight
Am I the only one that finds OCW conpletely underwhelming?

Lecture slides and notes which make up a lot of the content isn't very useful
to me without the lectures.

Stanford has a few classes with all the lectures on YouTube. During my first
algorithms course in undergrad they were super useful and the professors were
really good at explaining things in plain languages. Better than my own
instructors.

Same thing for Khan Academy. Their content is brilliant.

OCW is just a data dump.

~~~
blcknight
Although maybe in now wrong. It seems some have video lectures now.

~~~
davidivadavid
They've had videos for about as long as they've existed. OP is misinformed.

~~~
ghaff
There was very little video and audio when it was started. Remember it dates
to 2002 (i.e. three years before YouTube was founded) and it wasn't really
routine, easy, or inexpensive to take video of lectures, edit it, and host it
online.

Also, as I said in another comment, the main impetus of OCW was to provide
materials for educators to use in order to create their own courses. In a way,
I suppose it was part of a similar top-down, enable institutions to provide
local learning opportunities thinking that One Laptop Per Child was part of as
well.

------
gumby
A comment on the comments about MIT's role as a school, government "subsidies"
etc: Don't think of MIT as a school, think of it as a very large research lab
with a small school attached.

There are about 10K students, but about 20K staff, a surprising number of
which don't even interact with grad students much less undergrads (and
undergrads are often found in research labs to a much greater degree than
other schools).

So if you quote the stats, consider that tuition (and residence fees etc) is
only about 14% of revenue. Does that mean the education is subsidized by the
other 86%? No, education (which includes operating the dorms etc) is only
about 16% of expenses (this has fluctuated but hasn't changed hugely over the
30 years since I graduated, not that I monitor the budget every year!).

So there's a reason why you feel like students aren't appreciated t MIT -- by
many people they aren't. OCW is not just a great resource, but a way of making
the educational mission more visible (and to the administration visibility is
primarily how much money you bring in -- which I consider reasonable, as long
as it's not the only metric).

I get several hardcopy pieces of MIT propaganda per month; less than half of
it mentions students, almost none of whom are undergrads. And this is despite
the fact that my donations and participation are almost all in support of
undergraduate education.

~~~
ghaff
I don't necessarily disagree with some of your points. But MIT has about 12K
staff (of which about 2K are faculty or teaching staff). And I believe that
the remaining 10K includes Lincoln Labs which has about 4K employees.

~~~
gumby
FWIW there's Lincoln Labs, MITRE, Draper and other such fig leaf spinouts
designed to get paper over MIT's Vietnam-war-era restrictions on classified
research.

~~~
ghaff
Lincoln is still officially part of MIT. Draper is not. (Not sure what status
MITRE ever had.)

