slide rules forgotten the more, no tears were shed
I am in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech; it has a fine program for every area, mine being Mechanical. Since we are a school with significant involvement in sports, we have a wealth of charity gifts coming into the university from outlets in that area as well as proud (often sports-loving) alumni who give MILLIONS to the university every single year. Over time, this has had a cyclical effect for the success of the university and the quality of programs has been improved manyfold. Thus, our premiere engineering curriculum is better and better. Freshmen who get into the college have endless resources, to tell you the truth. It’s a blessing, I would say.
But I did make the limitation that the blessing was for those who got into [accepted into] the college. An excellent student won’t get turned away, but there are other reasons why one may not find themselves in upper campus.
I stopped by the Engineering Technology Showcase today. Within minutes, I had received a bit of news that left me stunned. Incoming freshmen for the 2006-07 academic year are required to have Tablet PCs. The PC requirement itself is nothing new; laptops were required some time around 2002. But tablets? I get the sneaking suspicion that something is up.
First, 75% of incoming engineering freshmen have always had Dells. That number has fluctuated but has remained consistent on average. As of the 2006-07 school year, 0% of incoming freshmen will have Dells, since that company does not currently offer a Tablet PC. Ironically enough, at the Showcase today, HP had the largest setup there; and they were conveniently solely promoting their tablets (a few desktops were opened up beside the tablets). The fact that students will now be forced to pay more for a computer architecture likely poorly-suited for their needs is baffling.
Second, the specs that the college requires are ABSURD for Tablet PCs. I did a search on Tablet PCs with 2.00 GHz Pentium M processors and only about a dozen models came up. One was an Acer, the rest were… you guessed it.. HP. Also check out the video card requirement - what current Tablet PC has a video card that size?
Third, this will finally turn the College of Engineering into something that only those with serious cash can get into. A scholarship is up for grabs that asked students to respond to a question as to why engineering undergrad candidates are decreasing. My response was that the college is increasingly isolating itself with the financial requirements to get into the program (and if you’re out of state, Godspeed, comrade) and I also mentioned that the fascinating research programs are hardly marketed. Ignoring my other essay points for the time, a Tablet PC is an expensive piece of technology as it is. Plus, you’re getting less performance per dollar in comparison to regular laptops. A lose/lose situation. The pool of students interested in restrictions like that will now begin to run dry as they look at other schools that don’t require ridiculous requirements as this. Let’s hope this isn’t a significant deterrent.
A friend of mine who recently transferred into our fine Pamplin College of Business was shocked that he was required to have a Windows XP-running laptop. He’s since used his Toshiba zero times in class and prefers his desktop when he’s back at his apartment (he was hoping to get a Mac laptop when transferring here, but Business school people told him it wouldn’t work). He has effectively spent well over one thousand dollars on a piece of machinery that provides him no advantage to other students (also, he has received no software that is Windows-only). The computer labs on this campus are incredible and open 24/7; unless the university is trying to cut back on computer expenses for the general student population by letting us foot the bill, then there is no reason to put STUPID requirements like this on students.
Also, those engineering laptops will be mandatorily used in two classes in the freshmen year, and then will never be brought to class again, since nothing else requires them. This is really bugging me. I was considering sending off a modified and dumbed-down version of this entry to the Collegiate Times (which they likely would print because they enjoy incendiary material) but then I remembered I am still being considered for that scholarship I mentioned earlier. If living in America has taught me anything, sometimes it’s best to live in bitterness beneath your oppressors because, were their inability as great as you hope, they will likely collapse before you do. Actually, I wish the college itself well, but the people making the technology decisions, well, they deserve significantly less than warm fuzzies.
This will be just another area I will have to address as an RA in the fall as freshmen engineers request mental support for “why did I have to spend so much on this piece of crap?”
Edit: I noticed there are more tablets that have 2.00 GHz processors, but still ultimately few.
More Edit: I can’t get this whole situation out of mind. The performance of AutoDesk Inventor is only ample on many of the laptops I’ve seen lately; I can’t begin to imagine the loss incurred by switching to lesser-powered tablets. Only baked goods could squelch this fire in me.
March 30th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Ryan, your analysis is brilliant. I couldn’t agree with you more.
I would imagine some incoming students will revolt and not heed any of VT’s recommendations.
How hardline is the college enforcing this fascist policy?
March 30th, 2006 at 6:50 pm
When I was on the Student Technology Council, we were doing an initiative to test out PowerBooks as a laptop choice. We went through all of the software and tested the Windows-only apps (Inventor and a program called Alice) in Virtual PC 7 (which is ironically free for engineering students on campus). Everything ran moderately ok in emulation; and, of course, the native apps were stellar. They allowed a select few incoming freshmen to opt for a PowerBook the following year if the student asked for the special treatment first (i.e. it wasn’t a pronounced decision). My PowerBook does everything perfectly and I’ve never hit a snag in getting things done; if anything, it is a benefit since I don’t deal with the endless security threats that roam campus. Whenever I need to use a Windows machine, I go to one of the labs on campus and take care of my work there. Typically, that only turns up when I need specific software that I don’t want to purchase at all (last semester, MiniTab was a requirement for one class, but every Windows lab computer has it).
Their decision to go to Tablet PCs is so anti-common sense. This is certainly one of the brazen efforts of those now-renegade STC members who just get a kick out of computer companies letting them mess around with new toys.
March 30th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
The Student Technology Council (STC) also had a role to play in this debacle. Just as you and your peers evaluated the Powerbooks last year, the STC has evaluated Tablets this year. Their conclusion: Technology offered by tablets provide little if any advantage to engineering students, offset by the disadvantage by lackluster performance in more mainstream areas. Their advice was to ditch the tablet. The Undergraduate Computing Committee (read, administrators that determine the best thing for incoming students) went ahead with the Tablet requirement anyway.
Sounds like the Undergraduate Computing Committee is hunting for grants, publicity, and recognition; however, this will not get them recognition in the area they need to focus on, the area they for which they have the least concern - Education.
March 31st, 2006 at 12:37 am
Nik, thanks a bunch for the clarification. I retract my negative statements aimed at the STC members. To the extent I remove hostilities towards those students, I amplify my inner wrath (even, though, rather subdued) for the few daft administrators that deserve it.
After the COE effectively removed all non-research professors in the past two years (unless they submitted themselves to a striking salary cut), I have witnessed the deterioration of the early freshmen classes, but have seen the incoming classes, oddly enough, become more focused and determined to step forward to those challenges.
March 31st, 2006 at 2:46 pm
I am a current member of the STC, and will be on the Council until I graduate in 2008. Therefore…
Ryan: Nik is almost right. We extensively tested Gateway, Toshiba, and HP tablet PCs this year and discovered that they are useful for keeping notes organized in on place (removing the need to keep track of several different notebooks). However, they are, as noted, underpowered and overexpensive. Furthermore, their battery life is horrible due to the need to keep the touch-screen powered all the time. (Of course, one can turn the touch-screen off, but then you have just a crappy laptop.) Given all this, we sent Jesse to the UCC and he delivered our recommendation that tablets were not only not a good idea, but actually a bad idea. You have expressed many good reasons; I love your assessment of the cost of engineering at Tech (I’m from South Carolina).
But I must say this, to be honest: the STC did not do all it could have to prevent the adoption of tablets. Those who were given tablets in the beginning of the year (I personally have continued working with a PowerBook, the iPods, and software) were to have written assessments of them and given them to the UCC as recommendations as they reviewed them. (It was not made clear that they would be making their decision based on these.) Thus, Jesse says that when he delivered our final recommendation the decision had been all but made. I cannot speak for the rest of the STC (though I have spoken to most of them, and they agree that tablets are a bad idea), I apologize that we did not do more to prevent this; we all would have, had we known that they would pay more attention to individual incremental assessments than a final, collaborative, definitive recommendation.
Nik: thanks for sticking up for us. Let me know what I can do.
March 31st, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Thanks for the first-hand info, Jerry. What happens happens, and after Nik’s notes and your testimoniall, I trust that the decision was ultimately outside of the STC’s control and influence (even though a tablet review was being formulated at the time). Again, I recant my negative statements towards the STC after hearing the insider knowledge. And I wish you and the group luck with future assignments.
March 31st, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Such eloquent words, sir. I’m an engineering GRAD student, for Pete’s sake, and use a nearly-3-year-old PowerBook which has assisted me more than a PC (desktop, laptop, or tablet alike) ever would. This just goes to show that Tech is run less as a school than a business.
April 2nd, 2006 at 11:46 pm
I was/am furious about the laptop requirement. This new tablet requirement makes even less sense. I hope the incoming freshmen have more sense than I did four years ago and ignore this ludicrous “requirement.”
April 4th, 2006 at 8:52 am
Does anyone know how much this is going to be enforced? I had a friend who was a senior BSE student (it was her last semester) who transferred in and had missed a few of the intro engineering courses and had to go back and take them. They failed to notify her of this until her last semester. One of these was unfortunately a class that required a laptop. The professor forced her to bring a laptop, giving the impression upon her that her grade would suffer if she didn’t. This almost forced her to have to spend quite a bit of money for one class. Luckily a friend let her borrow a laptop. Could have just been the professor, but i thought she tried going above the professor to appeal and it was denied. This fact is a bit fuzzy, so take that at face value.
April 9th, 2006 at 2:03 am
I hate Dells. I also hate this requirement. It makes me sad for the engineers. Poor, poor souls. I heart my pbook:)
April 17th, 2006 at 12:46 am
Where is Apple in all of this? What has happened to the seemingly close relations Virginia Tech has built with Apple over the last few years through the construction of System X et cetera? I have been following the Tablet PC story as a spectator, and I wonder why a corporate Apple representative hasn’t stepped in and tried to strike a deal with the CoE to continue the effort to increase Apple use among engineering students. Perhaps VtMug might bring this whole issue to the company’s attention.
It is important to remember that our favorite computer manufaturer does not have her hands tied behind her back.
April 17th, 2006 at 1:02 am
Maurice - It is not typical of Apple to court universities; frequently, it is the other way around. Apple doesn’t go out of their way to give people huge discounts on hardware, so universities must approach Apple with big ideas before they will get anywhere. This is not a haughty approach, but rather one meant to put the best hardware into the hands of those who will use it to the optimum efficiency.
PC manufacturers and Microsoft are the opposite. They attempt to infiltrate campuses with absurdly discounted prices on software and hardware and make claim that the universities chose them as the best of the bunch. However, that claim is bogus since it is often the case that budgets run universities.
We, at VT, are lucky to have the Math Emporium run entirely from Macs. There is one support guy for the 555 iMacs. Imagine how many IT staff it would take to maintain 555 PCs. Imagine. The Math Empo director and Mathematics Dean made a big decision to pay the slightly extra initial overhead to get the advantage of long-term usability with iMacs, in comparison to cheap upfront costs for PCs but a tremendous cost in staffing in-house technical support.