Dispatches from the collapse
It is tempting to blame consultants and their ilk for the troubles that Dubai faces today. Surely, if my experience was at all typical, Western consulting firms are derelict in their duty as advisers to the United Arab Emirates. But I would argue that consultants are a product of their surroundings, not the other way around. Prior to the recent meltdown, which had commentators everywhere wondering if Dubai would destroy the fragile recovery that the banking sector has eked out, Boston Consulting Group’s top brass was extolling the virtues of the Middle East and the stability it would provide to the world’s financial markets. And why not? Every recommendation that encourages more expenditures by clients offers up greater opportunity for future cases. If Dubai’s companies lack the internal resources or motivation to poke the conclusions made by their rented consultants, if they reward optimism and penalize pessimism, they should not be surprised when they receive cheery, but flimsy advice.
Should we cut NASA funding?
The White House has announced plans to host a conference in Florida on April 15 during which President Obama will unveil his vision for the U.S. space program. If recent moves by the administration are any indication, this new vision will significantly curtail public funding for space activity. The president is working hard to spin the upcoming change as a transition rather than a cut, and perhaps for good reason: He is unlikely to find a receptive audience in Florida, long a recipient of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s largess.
Should we cut NASA funding?
To the critics of the space program, greedy astronauts fill their pockets with our hard earned dollars and blast off into space, leaving our children with only rocket fumes for lunch. But to its proponents, space exploration represents a relatively small expenditure that brings positive real world impacts in the form of cutting edge research, crucial data on weather and climate change, thousands of jobs, and more than a few spinoff technologies. The truth is somewhere in between.
Load up on life, not classes
As potential MIT students, you’ve seen the admissions booklets: MIT will drown you with opportunities. Want to play Indonesian gamelan? Research polymerizable nanoemulsions with world-class professors? Shoot fellow students with nerf guns on a Friday night — as part of an official student group? You’ve come to the right place!
Why should you come to MIT?
A year ago I too was a high school senior with a decision to make — what college should I attend? Since you are reading this article, you can probably guess that I chose MIT. A year later, I can say that I am very glad that I did. Since arriving here, I have only discovered more reasons why it is, to use a popular high-school-senior term, “awesome.” So this article, which had to be cut down from my original 127 reasons, outlines the top 10 reasons why you — yes, you — should come to MIT in the fall.
Why should you come to MIT?
Every college you visit is probably telling you why you should attend. Sometimes they’re good reasons, but sometimes people make their college choice for the wrong reasons. And sometimes, people don’t know what they’re getting themselves into. I therefore present the top ten worst reasons to decide to go to MIT.
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.
HDAG is culmination of years of work
Last Friday, <i>The Tech</i> published an opinion piece on student engagement by UA President Michael Bennie. His column referred to two recommendations of concern to undergraduates from the Institute-Wide Planning Task Force: creating a more rational system for summer housing utilization and developing a new plan for House Dining.
With freedom comes responsibility
The argument goes that MIT is unlike other colleges. We are “special,” and for prospective students, we are “different” in ways you have to experience to understand — hence Campus Preview Weekend, where students, living groups, faculty, and administrators try their hardest to let about 1,000 prefrosh experience as much MIT as can be crammed into four days.
Welcome to your caste
I settled in a studio apartment on the thirteenth floor of an apartment complex in a western, unfinished area of the city. It was simple but spacious, and despite my zeal to be as frugal as I could, was still far more than I needed to satisfy my college student tastes. Still, my coworkers laughed at the apartment as the type of place an Indian engineer would live in — not a flophouse by any means, but clearly not the level of luxury a white person should treat himself to.
Free pizza
“What does graduate student leadership at MIT mean to you?” After nearly four years in graduate leadership positions, I’m still not sure I can answer this question. But hopefully you’ll be a bit amused as I try.
A personal view of comprehensive immigration reform Why welcoming immigrants is the American thing to do
Immigration means different things to different people. For some, it’s the start of a new life in the “Land of Freedom and Opportunity.” For others, just a way to send money home. Among those already established here, some feel that it’s a welcome influx of diverse traditions, novel philosophies, and colorful customs; others feel it brings in competition that depletes limited economic resources.
Calm down? I think not
Health care protesters are an unruly lot. They’ve broken windows. They’ve sent threatening letters to congressmen. They’ve called representatives bad names and spat at them. By the standards of American politics, this is small potatoes, and like everything else, it too shall pass.
When students get a say
Two years ago, as I was becoming more involved in MIT’s undergraduate student government, I read an article in the faculty newsletter by Martin Holmes et al. entitled The Task Force on Student Engagement: A Path Forward (<i>http://web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/204/martin.html</i>). The opening paragraph succinctly put the latest student engagement struggles into context: “In recent months, MIT’s undergraduates and graduate students have expressed concern about their role in certain decisions, including the way NW-35 was presented to the community, the conversion of Green Hall to undergraduate housing, and communication regarding W1 and student dining.” As I mentioned in a previous piece (One Undergraduate Voice, <i>http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N3/bennie.html</i>), members of the MIT Community have responded to this call for student engagement through a variety of efforts. Some of them have been very successful in informing students or collaborating with them, while others have fallen short.
Update from the Graduate Student Council
The Graduate Student Council set out to chart a financially prudent path to better graduate student life and to maintain core activities and services provided to students this year. And with much pleasure, I report that our administration has achieved what we promised — not just to maintain the level of graduate student life at MIT, but to bring it to new horizons.
Return assignments <br />before finals week
The Undergraduate Association’s Student Committee on Educational Policy should dedicate themselves to adding a new component to the End of Term academic regulations: requiring all assignments and midterms to be graded before finals. While numerous regulations currently dictate when subjects with final exams may have their last assignment due, and the Friday before the start of the reading period is declared the last test date, there are no requirements for when assignments and midterm exams must be returned by.
The city of tomorrow
I hadn’t expected much coming out of college. I knew that recessions were not kind to the young and inexperienced, so I was surprised when I received an offer from the Boston Consulting Group to work as a business consultant in Dubai.
Apply for UA positions
President Susan Hockfield and Vice President for Institute Affairs Kirk D. Kolenbrander attended Senate this past Monday. The two discussed the state of MIT’s finances, particularly in the context of W1, and answered questions from students. The majority of questions surrounded MIT’s commitment to innovation in the future and how we can budget appropriately to be both more innovative and more sustainable. A full transcript of the discussion will be available online after minutes have been approved at the next Senate meeting at <i>http://ua.mit.edu/senate/minutes</i>. Senate also passed a bill to fund the creation of Athena Paper Notebooks and to support a MassCPR event.
Finally!
There’s a health policy joke that MIT’s Jon Gruber likes to tell: A health economist dies and goes to heaven. When he gets there, he is greeted by St. Peter and told that he can ask God one question. The economist asks, “Will there ever be universal health insurance coverage in the United States?” God replies, “Yes, but not in my lifetime.”
Who’s in charge here?
<i>This is the first in a series on the graduate student leadership development experience at MIT, brought to you by the Leadership Development Subcommittee of the MIT Graduate Student Council. They welcome comments and feedback at </i>gsc-leadership@mit.edu<i>.</i>