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How MIT Became the Most Important University in the World
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- pkmiec 14y agoI'm still on the election. It took me a while to realize the title if referring to the university and not the presidential candidate.
- timeshifter 14y agoCan we please stop using "sexy" to describe tech work? It isn't sexy, it requires a LOT of knowledge and a LOT of critical thinking. That it gets called "sexy" and is "the thing that teens and twenty-somethings flock to" just shows the culture we have here. "Oh that's cool, I wanna try it!" 90% of the people who ever start in "tech entrepreneurship" are going to fail, because they have absolutely no idea what they're doing, other than following the trendy train. Drives me nuts.
- walshemj 14y agoSorry if you don't think that say a Spitfire isn't sexy and should make any engineers heart sing just to see it fly and to hear the sound of the merlin or griffin you have no soul. And the sad grandeur of the last TSR2 (look it up) all alone at the back of a hanger with its wings off at Cranfield doesn’t make you sad you should not be working in technology not even on some little iphone fart app.
- timeshifter 14y agoThe Spitfire is sexy. The work that went in to producing it? Not so much. That's the issue: the people who are being attracted by the "sexy" tag are people who actually don't want to do any of that work.
- potatolicious 14y agoI dont' see the problem. People are already attracted to engineering for the "wrong" reasons - most of them dig deep enough to discover just how much work it is, and run screaming in the other direction. And that's fine, now we have someone who's doing something else and better informed to boot. I'd venture this "problem" is neither a problem nor is it unique to our field. People think making video games is sexy until they see the innards of a game studio. People think making movies is sexy until they actually start doing it. People think being a musician is sexy until they've dealt with labels, marketing, and the royalty system. So on and so forth. Nothing executed at a high level is actually that sexy, but that's okay, because it's still sexy to the people who are doing it. Tons of rocket scientists, software engineers, automotive engineers, movie directors, and musicians wake up every day and can't wait to do the myriad of supposedly boring things they find sexy.
- northisup 14y agoIs it because people from MIT go around saying it is the most important university in the world?
- jere 14y agoSincerely, Boston Magazine
- rm999 14y agoMy theory is MIT has really good PR (in addition to a lot of really smart people). Over many years I've noticed when research comes out of MIT headlines almost always state "MIT does X". I haven't noticed this pattern as much with other Universities. Here's a test, go to google news, and search for '<university> researchers' and look for articles about research results/breakthroughs from that University. I tried it with MIT and Harvard, here are the top three results about research for each: * MIT figures out how to power tiny devices with... the ear * MIT Breakthrough Could Lead To New Military Body Armor Only... * New MIT Method Could Help Communities Plan For Climate Risk and for Harvard: * Tiny, Artificial Lung On Microchip Used To Test Drugs * Harvard Research Finds New Ways to Change Coating Colors * Bio-battery could power medical implants
- rayiner 14y agoSorry that would be Harvard.
- objclxt 14y agoDifferent folks, different strokes. I think everyone should realise going into this that the entire premise of the article is ridiculous. I think very few people in academia would disagree with this. MIT may be the most important university in the world for technology or entrepreneurship. But if you're a arts student is MIT 'the most important university in the world'? No, probably not. It is extremely easy to myopically focus on the fields that are relevant to your own interests, and prioritise accordingly. Of course, it's a magazine article, not a paper. People shouldn't take it too seriously - I went to Harvard, I also cross-registered at MIT. I enjoyed my time at both places. I now interview and help recruit international students in the UK. If your primary readon for choosing a university is a magazine article, or a ranking, or anything other than your own personal feeling you're doing something wrong.
- rayiner 14y agoI agree the premise of the article is ridiculous. I was taking a tongue-in-cheek jab at the self-importance exhibited in the article... Harvard absolutely dominates MIT in finance, business, politics, law, medicine, and all the fields of the humanities. I wouldn't be surprised if a higher proportion of Harvard graduates started their own companies, considering Harvard's massive MBA program.
- _pius 14y agoHarvard absolutely dominates MIT in finance, business, politics, law, medicine, and all the fields of the humanities. I wouldn't be surprised if a higher proportion of Harvard graduates started their own companies, considering Harvard's massive MBA program. You're very confused. Related: MIT does not have a law school or medical school.
- rayiner 14y ago
- yumraj 14y agoCan "any" University claim to be the "most important" ? One of the most important, yes, but "most" .. I doubt it.
- arbuge 14y agoThe claim is pretty absurd whichever way you look at it. As much as I love entrepreneurship, acing that doesn't necessarily make you the most important university in the world. Even if you narrow down the list of candidates to just 2 schools (as, surprise surprise, B Magazine seems to have done out of the gates), Harvard does pretty well in basic science and medicine for example - one would think those count for something... It's just an opinion with a linkbaity title attached imho.
- Mvandenbergh 14y agoLiterally speaking, of course not since the set of universities doesn't have a universally accepted ordering. The article is making the rhetorical point that at this particular moment other universities are following MIT in a direction which has historically been very alien to them and that this makes MIT the "most important" right now.
- paulgb 14y agoSomewhat related: "As of this writing, Cambridge seems to be the intellectual capital of the world. I realize that seems a preposterous claim. What makes it true is that it's more preposterous to claim about anywhere else." -- Paul Graham (http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html)
- eli_gottlieb 14y agoI lived in Cambridge for a while, and that's absolutely preposterous. The city is merely very full of itself and pretentious, and simply does not have an absolute concentration or monopoly on brains. In fact, most of the "normal" population of Boston and Cambridge rather resent having to play host to the universities. Harvard and MIT are practically adjacent by West Coast standards Given that they're less than two miles away from each other, they're practically adjacent by any standards. You can ride the #1 bus for a while or the Red Line just two stops from MIT to Harvard or vice-versa.
- pav3l 14y agoJust curious, are there people here who went through or are going through the MIT Tech Entrepreneurship program? Or maybe just took some courses from them? What are your thoughts?
- igul222 14y agoThis article was something of a joke between me and my friends here at MIT- while parts of it are true, parts of it are also patently false ("MIT kids are [...] covered in tattoos—they’re cool and hip and very different. Their clothes are edgy.") The types of people described in the article definitely exist here. They're also definitely a lot less common then the article suggests.
- mtp 14y agoThis article reads like an advertising pamphlet. It also awkwardly avoids mentioning that the university most often described as the center of tech entrepreneurship is Stanford. Boston seems to be developing an inferiority complex regarding Silicon Valley.
- eli_gottlieb 14y agoBoston has an inferiority complex about everything. Admittedly, it's entirely justified in seeing how much-loved New York City's "entrepreneurial scene" has become, when NYC has maybe half the concentration of serious technology companies, universities and talent available in Boston... but has several times the money.
- Osmium 14y agoSpeaking as someone who went to a university that could also claim this title, I think there's a tendency to overstate these things because it makes a good story (case in point with this article). The difference between top-tier and mid-level universities seems a lot bigger from the outside. The truth is, there are smart people everywhere (and, conversely, dumb people too). Someone with a game-changing idea is almost as likely to come from somewhere completely "random" as to come from MIT. I'm not saying there isn't a difference. The difference is definitely there. MIT is great, and is a pioneer in many respects (to pick just one example, their OpenCourseWare initiative is wonderful, and MIT's entrepreneurship drive is good too). It's just that the difference isn't as great as articles like this will claim, and it does a disservice to the people doing great work at other universities to say things like this.
- freyfogle 14y ago"it does a disservice to the people doing great work at other universities to say things like this." Totally agree, and I write that as an MIT alum. This is just Boston Magazine link baiting targeting the MIT and Harvard communities.
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- Leszek 14y agoThis reads more like "Why MIT is better than Harvard and Harvard can suck it and how MIT's dad could beat up Harvard's dad" than MIT becoming the most important university in the world...