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Re:National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by rdl on Saturday January 12, 2013 @05:19PM (#5049115)
I lost most of my faith in the MIT administration in the 1990s when I was a student; they're basically a bunch of BU/small liberal arts college grad professional administrators of colleges running the institute into the ground. That's the biggest failure of the MIT model vs. a place like Stanford; there's not much chance MIT grads will eventually want to be university administrators.
Re:National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by Permit on Saturday January 12, 2013 @09:28PM (#5049732)
>They're basically a bunch of BU/small liberal arts college grad professional administrators of colleges running the institute into the ground.

Your arrogance is truly breathtaking. I can't believe people shit on other's majors and college choices like this.

Re:National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by VexXtreme on Sunday January 13, 2013 @12:50AM (#5050106)
And your lack of ability to understand what was written is even more breathtaking.

The man's point was that it is not suitable for a technical institution like that to be managed and administered by non-technical people. There are a number of reasons for that but the main one is that they lack the expertise needed to run such a place and can't fully appreciate the culture of hacking that many such institutes were built upon.

Same goes for companies. The most successful software companies out there are those run by engineers. Think Google. When "business people" take over, things often have a way of turning for worse. I've seen it time and again.

Re:National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by Permit on Sunday January 13, 2013 @12:42PM (#5051259)
He's replying to a comment that said their help line was taken down. That's not a technology problem, and I fail to see how an engineer or computer science grad would have better tackled that issue.
Re:National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by seivan on Sunday January 13, 2013 @03:58AM (#5050347)
I agree, been saying that for a long time. You can't have "business people" running companies that run on software.
Re:National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by rdl on Sunday January 13, 2013 @06:00AM (#5050522)
I think people are better at running the schools they themselves attended. MIT grads would be better running MIT than non-MIT grads; MIT grads, however, would be horrible at running small liberal arts colleges.

(the idea is probably a MIT undergrad or grad student who then goes to another school or business for some kind of management experience, then eventually returns to MIT, like some of the best administrators; or, a professor who also does admin functions. Professional administrators have grown in number dramatically faster than enrollment, which is part of why tuition is so high. We don't need ~50 deans.

Re:National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by seivan on Sunday January 13, 2013 @03:58AM (#5050348)
Way to go to miss the point completely. Stupidity is also breathtaking, reading comprehension might help.