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My interactions with Stanford administrators convinced me that I didn't need a graduate degree and that I would never donate to the school. Beyond that, I also

My interactions with Stanford administrators convinced me that I didn't need a graduate degree and that I would never donate to the school. Beyond that, I also got totally fed up trying to figure out how to get definitive positive permission to do anything. At one point I asked facilities if I could build an oven to cure composites. They reviewed and approved the plans. But when some other group within the school saw the result, they flipped out and hired a consultant to trump up false hazards. I was only clued in because a sympathetic dean leaked an email to me. I invited the fire marshal out to take a look, and I got a thumbs up to operate. I eventually moved the oven to rented space elsewhere since I was told I couldn't keep the thing on campus. I was then told my student group would be dissolved if we used off-campus facilities. We agreed that if I brought it back that my group could use it for its intended purpose for a year and then find another solution next year. I found a crew demolishing it at 4 AM the following morning. A deal's a deal, I guess. We went back to heating our composites with propane heaters aimed into a collapsible wood-and-plastic box, rather than our electrically heated concrete and flame-resistant foam box. The propane solution has been used every year since.

TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
And we're told the reason China is rocketing ahead is because of IP theft. Meanwhile, we can't train competent engineers, technicians, and tradesmen, in the West, because everyone is too caught up in this type of gatekeeping and pigheadedness.
- steve76 4y ago
  [dead]
- ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
  When I was in college the science building had a machine shop. Old-time professors remembered when the department hired technicians to build experiments. Students would build crazy things there for classes, like 2 meter high tesla coils. After I graduated they built a new science building for $X00M. It was very eco-friendly, had its own cafe, lots of natural lighting, lots of nooks for small groups of students to gather and study ... but no machine shop. (Although since then they have added a 3D printer service.) But when you look at places with high rates of innovation like Shenzhen or SV, one of their strengths is that the people with knowledge of techniques are nearby to readily avaiable facilities for production. I wonder how much production knowledge has been lost from the West (c.f. the rust belt), and how much that will cost us in the long term.
  - alangibson 4y ago
    They could a very safe enclosed CNC milling machine and lathe for a few hundred grand. No one wants to have grubby machinery around anymore though. That's for offshoring.
  - shreyshnaccount 4y ago
    As long as these bean counting MBA bloody management pigs get to decide where our money goes, we will all end up doing absolutely nothing of value. When I was in HS, we had one of those MBA principals incharge for a while, and it was absolute hell-couldn't do anything at all of value, lest it be an unforgivable sin. and then we had a technical principal who didn't care about the BS, and we were able to do some amazing projects, get funding for whatever crazy idea we could elaborate on and ended up ranking really good nationally in a few competitions.
  - jrpt 4y ago
    Seems like someone forgot to tell the designers they needed a machine shop. Stanford's physics building has a machine shop. I did an undergraduate in physics at Stanford and used it once or twice. They have full time machinists working there too.
xvedejas 4y ago
There are hundreds of stories like this out of Caltech as well. Ultimately it makes one believe the saying that it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission, and that getting things done relies on this.
- jay3ss 4y ago
  Isn't that kind of how it worked out with Jack Parsons? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons_(rocket_engineer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons_(rocket_engineer)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
namlem 4y ago
"I was then told my student group would be dissolved if we used off-campus facilities" This is the craziest part to me. There doesn't seem to be any rational reason for it other than wanting absolute control for its own sake.
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  Liability insurance most likely
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    Maybe patent rights as well. If the facilities belong to a company, they may want a piece.
  - zbrozek 4y ago
    Stanford is self-insured and has weirdly inconsistent ideas around riskiness of various activities. And no risk appetite, tolerance, or ability to reevaluate once something has received its scarlet letter. As far as I can tell, the only way to do anything is to have it tied to a grant or sports. That profit motive provides back-pressure against risk aversion. That means non-research, non-sportsball activities are doomed to being sanitized to the point of boredom.
colordrops 4y ago
I'm confused. Why is any of this happening? What are the motivations behind the people putting up all these barriers?
- rendall 4y ago
  There has been a vast increase in the proportion of administrators to faculty and students on college campuses throughout the US [1] The result of this is greater administrative political power versus faculty and students, which leads to campus and academic culture being reorganized to suit administrators over faculty and students. The cause of this is lots of available money needing to be spent, from huge tuition increases over the decades, in turn driven by government policy. Guaranteed student loans and their inability to be discharged in bankruptcy had unintended consequences. [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/higher-ed-administrators-growth_n_4738584 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/higher-ed-administrators-grow... old article but still relevant
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rbanffy 4y ago
> I eventually moved the oven to rented space elsewhere since I was told I couldn't keep the thing on campus I can understand this. The US has a very litigious society. If someone gets sick from being exposed to something that can even be loosely associated with your oven, the school will have to spend a lot of money defending itself.

TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago

And we're told the reason China is rocketing ahead is because of IP theft. Meanwhile, we can't train competent engineers, technicians, and tradesmen, in the West, because everyone is too caught up in this type of gatekeeping and pigheadedness.

steve76 4y ago
[dead]
ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
When I was in college the science building had a machine shop. Old-time professors remembered when the department hired technicians to build experiments. Students would build crazy things there for classes, like 2 meter high tesla coils. After I graduated they built a new science building for $X00M. It was very eco-friendly, had its own cafe, lots of natural lighting, lots of nooks for small groups of students to gather and study ... but no machine shop. (Although since then they have added a 3D printer service.) But when you look at places with high rates of innovation like Shenzhen or SV, one of their strengths is that the people with knowledge of techniques are nearby to readily avaiable facilities for production. I wonder how much production knowledge has been lost from the West (c.f. the rust belt), and how much that will cost us in the long term.
- alangibson 4y ago
  They could a very safe enclosed CNC milling machine and lathe for a few hundred grand. No one wants to have grubby machinery around anymore though. That's for offshoring.
- shreyshnaccount 4y ago
  As long as these bean counting MBA bloody management pigs get to decide where our money goes, we will all end up doing absolutely nothing of value. When I was in HS, we had one of those MBA principals incharge for a while, and it was absolute hell-couldn't do anything at all of value, lest it be an unforgivable sin. and then we had a technical principal who didn't care about the BS, and we were able to do some amazing projects, get funding for whatever crazy idea we could elaborate on and ended up ranking really good nationally in a few competitions.
- jrpt 4y ago
  Seems like someone forgot to tell the designers they needed a machine shop. Stanford's physics building has a machine shop. I did an undergraduate in physics at Stanford and used it once or twice. They have full time machinists working there too.

xvedejas 4y ago

There are hundreds of stories like this out of Caltech as well. Ultimately it makes one believe the saying that it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission, and that getting things done relies on this.

jay3ss 4y ago
Isn't that kind of how it worked out with Jack Parsons? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons_(rocket_engineer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons_(rocket_engineer)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

namlem 4y ago

"I was then told my student group would be dissolved if we used off-campus facilities" This is the craziest part to me. There doesn't seem to be any rational reason for it other than wanting absolute control for its own sake.

dilyevsky 4y ago
Liability insurance most likely
- rbanffy 4y ago
  Maybe patent rights as well. If the facilities belong to a company, they may want a piece.
- zbrozek 4y ago
  Stanford is self-insured and has weirdly inconsistent ideas around riskiness of various activities. And no risk appetite, tolerance, or ability to reevaluate once something has received its scarlet letter. As far as I can tell, the only way to do anything is to have it tied to a grant or sports. That profit motive provides back-pressure against risk aversion. That means non-research, non-sportsball activities are doomed to being sanitized to the point of boredom.

colordrops 4y ago

I'm confused. Why is any of this happening? What are the motivations behind the people putting up all these barriers?

rendall 4y ago
There has been a vast increase in the proportion of administrators to faculty and students on college campuses throughout the US [1] The result of this is greater administrative political power versus faculty and students, which leads to campus and academic culture being reorganized to suit administrators over faculty and students. The cause of this is lots of available money needing to be spent, from huge tuition increases over the decades, in turn driven by government policy. Guaranteed student loans and their inability to be discharged in bankruptcy had unintended consequences. [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/higher-ed-administrators-growth_n_4738584 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/higher-ed-administrators-grow... old article but still relevant

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rbanffy 4y ago

> I eventually moved the oven to rented space elsewhere since I was told I couldn't keep the thing on campus I can understand this. The US has a very litigious society. If someone gets sick from being exposed to something that can even be loosely associated with your oven, the school will have to spend a lot of money defending itself.