Zooze the Horse roams around the pasture near Lamar State College. Zooze thinks about problems in academia. Zhe wants proffies to submit posts (blog posts, not fence posts).
Sunday, September 10, 2017
A weird MIT dorm dies, and a crisis blooms at colleges [wired.com]
Sounds like a pretty cool place -- one that served a purpose. And to a less extreme extent, as a goody-two-shoes who opted for a dorm with a somewhat countercultural (artsy/gay, when that was still at least a bit edgy) reputation, I can sympathize.
It also sounds like MIT admin might need a refresher on causation vs. correlation: if the dorm housing some of its most vulnerable students has a lower graduation rate (or a higher drug-use rate), is that really a surprise? Will the same students actually do better if dispersed around the campus (especially a campus where people get to choose a dorm their first year)? Sounds like they're going to find out. I hope they've actually acknowledged their hypothesis and designed a way to test it.
Sounds like a pretty cool place -- one that served a purpose. And to a less extreme extent, as a goody-two-shoes who opted for a dorm with a somewhat countercultural (artsy/gay, when that was still at least a bit edgy) reputation, I can sympathize.
ReplyDeleteIt also sounds like MIT admin might need a refresher on causation vs. correlation: if the dorm housing some of its most vulnerable students has a lower graduation rate (or a higher drug-use rate), is that really a surprise? Will the same students actually do better if dispersed around the campus (especially a campus where people get to choose a dorm their first year)? Sounds like they're going to find out. I hope they've actually acknowledged their hypothesis and designed a way to test it.