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Yesterday, Bloomberg News reported that "Apple CEO Impressed by Remote Work, Sees Permanent Changes; Veteran leader finds some things ‘work really well virtuall

Yesterday, Bloomberg News reported that "Apple CEO Impressed by Remote Work, Sees Permanent Changes; Veteran leader finds some things ‘work really well virtually’; CEO says 10% to 15% of employees have returned to the office'" My conclusion? Universities are simply going to have to cut their administrative staff and construction projects to sustainable levels. (What these levels actually are is a debatable topic, but the people affected this will be shocked at the drop.) We are not able to go back to the way things used to be, even if that were a desirable goal, which it arguably is not.

fatnoah 6y ago
>My conclusion? Universities are simply going to have to cut their administrative staff and construction projects to sustainable levels. TBH, I think that these construction projects are how colleges keep in competition to each other. I remember college dorm rooms being very, very, very utilitarian. "Fancy" meant that there was an actual closet in the room. Now, my wife and I joke to each other what we'll know we've made it in life when we have accommodations as nice as the average college upperclassman. Without the fancy physical infrastructure to show-off, colleges will have to rely solely on quality of remote education. AR/VR and other remote presence functions are going to rapidly improve in the wake of COVID. If current "online-only" colleges are smart, they'll see this as a place they can seriously compete with and probably surpass traditional brick and mortar colleges.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Note that that Bloomberg headline was a quite poor representation of the article; he was relatively impressed by remote work but didn't seem interested in permanently shifting the company in that direction.
vanusa 6y ago
My conclusion? If we start with an (obviously) invalid assumption - "The university experience is just like BigCorp work" - it's not surprising that we would arrive at an even wackier conclusion - like "What's good for companies like Apple should be good for the university experience, too".

fatnoah 6y ago

>My conclusion? Universities are simply going to have to cut their administrative staff and construction projects to sustainable levels. TBH, I think that these construction projects are how colleges keep in competition to each other. I remember college dorm rooms being very, very, very utilitarian. "Fancy" meant that there was an actual closet in the room. Now, my wife and I joke to each other what we'll know we've made it in life when we have accommodations as nice as the average college upperclassman. Without the fancy physical infrastructure to show-off, colleges will have to rely solely on quality of remote education. AR/VR and other remote presence functions are going to rapidly improve in the wake of COVID. If current "online-only" colleges are smart, they'll see this as a place they can seriously compete with and probably surpass traditional brick and mortar colleges.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

Note that that Bloomberg headline was a quite poor representation of the article; he was relatively impressed by remote work but didn't seem interested in permanently shifting the company in that direction.

vanusa 6y ago

My conclusion? If we start with an (obviously) invalid assumption - "The university experience is just like BigCorp work" - it's not surprising that we would arrive at an even wackier conclusion - like "What's good for companies like Apple should be good for the university experience, too".