A look back, and ahead
MIT is a different place today than it was one year ago. On a global level, MIT is connecting to the rest of the world in ways it never has before. On a local level, MIT itself is evolving — faced with new financial realities and a need to remain competitive with peer schools, the Institute has seen significant changes to important aspects of academics and student life. Many of 2010’s changes will define MIT for years to come.
‘Patriot Probes’ at the airport
This past Thanksgiving I, like many of you, passed through Boston Logan Airport in order to get home. Prior to my trip, I had been looking forward with a mixture of giddiness and dread to the opportunity of being subjected to an “enhanced pat down,” an experience I hoped would be illuminating, if not mortifying.
The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell
The city was strange and the society was unnerving, but what disturbed me most about my Dubai experience was my job as a business consultant for the Boston Consulting Group.
Dorm presidents defend REX
We have been told that the proposal to reduce the length of orientation has come down from your office, and so we as representatives of the student body are coming to you to ask that you amend the suggested changes to preserve the full length of Residence Exploration (REX).
CPW is not a replacement for REX
What has been happening to MIT recently? It seems as though the “powers that be” are chipping away at all the things that I thought made life at MIT worth it. At this point, I doubt I’ll recognize the place by my five-year reunion. I’ll spare you all the rant about dining, but shortening REX to a single day is completely unacceptable.
Living in a housing-constrained world
To the members of the student body who do not follow campus issues, there are only two facts you need to be aware of to have an above-average understanding of what is going on:
Resolutions for the new semester, by the economics
At the start of each year we collectively reflect upon the previous year’s achievements — or, too often, failures — and project our thoughts on the year ahead. On a wide scale, newspapers summarize the previous year’s news, give pop quizzes on the best gossip and make predictions on what key events will happen. As individuals, though, we have a certain degree of control over our future and so not only make predictions but resolutions about our future.
Corrections
In last Wednesday’s article about the Bad Ideas Competition, the sub-head incorrectly characterized an event as “frosh dog sledding.” The dog sledding event was open to all participants, and students from all classes participated.
In schools, effectiveness does not equal experience
Much to my delight, education reform has once again taken the national stage over the course of last year. Due to the publicly hyped Race to the Top program, the documentary Waiting for Superman, and the release of the latest Programme for International Student Assessment report, which yet again placed the U.S. in the middle of the pack in education, the public is demanding changes to our education system. Terms like merit-based pay, teacher tenure, and high-stakes testing have become more and more pervasive in American conversations over the last year. Yet even after a year of talk, public opinion has yet to converge on what should be done.
Can we make government more efficient?
As the U.S. Congress (belatedly) hammers out this year’s federal budget, our politicians and pundits have focused their attention on three questions. First, how important are the activities that government performs relative to the private enterprise that it supplants? Second, how redistributionary should our system of taxes and spending be, both in terms of how much we take from the rich to give to the poor, as well as how much we take from future generations to give to the present? And finally, which presents the greater risk: a failure to provide Keynesian stimulus today, or a potential debt crisis tomorrow?
MIT students on military engagements
Last November, The Tech published some of the results of a campus-wide political survey. We asked graduate and undergraduate students about their views on today’s most important social, political, and economic issues, and 2,145 people — 20 percent of campus — responded. Here, we present your responses to military engagement questions, particularly concerning the United States’ role in the Middle East.
Comedy against conformity
Iranian born American comedian Maz Jobrani has gained international recognition for his work in film, television, and stand-up comedy. A founding member of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, Jobrani has travelled throughout North America, the Middle East, Europe, and Australia using his comedic talents to talk about life as a Middle Eastern American — particularly, anecdotes from his family and from observations of his own ethnic group.
Republicans need a fresh candidate to do well in 2012
Intrade.com is an online prediction market that tracks, among other things, U.S. politics. In the aftermath of a bruising defeat of Congressional Democrats, Intrade predicts more of the same in 2012. The market currently gives Republicans a 3 in 5 chance of retaining control of their newly acquired House, and roughly a 2 in 3 chance of taking or tying the Senate.
The next great American crisis
The recent collapse of the financial sector was only felt by most after it happened. Today, we face yet another financial crisis that is quietly creeping up on us. And I’m not talking about a double-dip recession or a renewed threat from Wall Street. I’m talking about college loans, especially when combined with the current 9.8 percent unemployment rate. Like mortgages, the financial product that played a large role in the more recent collapse, college loans are widespread. Approximately two thirds of all college students graduate with college loans, and in 2008, The Project on Student Debt estimates that 206,000 students graduated with debts of $40,000 or greater. And the situation is not improving; total student loan debt in the United States is increasing at a rate of about $2,853.88 every second.
Ms. Hockfield, tear down this wall
The past few years are not a fluke: a four-year MIT education is in high demand. From 2004 to 2010, the number of applicants to MIT’s undergraduate program has gone up 48.5 percent, from 10,549 to 15,663, and early application numbers suggest this year will reveal a further 7-8 percent increase. This is not merely a matter of students applying to more colleges — the matriculation rate of admitted students has gone up, not down, from 58.7 percent to 64.6 percent.
MIT’s Libertarians
Last October, The Tech surveyed the undergraduate and graduate population about their political views, and 2,145, or 20 percent of the total student population, responded. We promised to provide follow-up analysis after our original overview in the November 2, 2010 issue of The Tech. Some readers wrote in and requested a breakdown of specific survey questions. Here, we take a look at how students responded when asked if they consider themselves libertarians.