6 ms·

It's not just MIT, it's pretty much any college with a 4 year engineering program. Almost everyone of my classmates took at least an extra semester or summer cl

It's not just MIT, it's pretty much any college with a 4 year engineering program. Almost everyone of my classmates took at least an extra semester or summer classes. 2/3 of the Freshman class dropped out (most of them to business school). A few schools have switched over to 5 year programs. Not everyone is cut out for an engineering degree and that's perfectly fine. Yes it's hard, but when you find that one thing you fall in love with you never give it up... That's when you graduate.

madisonmay 12y ago
I disagree with this sentiment. Suicide rates this high are not acceptable side effects of simply studying engineering. Yes, it's typically a tough program, but action needs to be taken to address a deeper issue. It's the intense pressure to succeed in an environment where stress is worn as a badge of honor that creates these issues, not the academic rigor of studying science/engineering.
- hharnisch 12y ago
  These disciplines attract a certain type of personality and are often people of high intelligence. Suicide rates among these cohorts is elevated to begin with. I don't know if it's enough to make up for an extra 4 per 100,000, but I can't help but wonder.
  - amelius 12y ago
    Interesting point. It turns out that introvert personalities are more commonly seen on suicidal forums. Closer inspection reveals that introvert intuitive (IN) type of personalities rank by far highest in suicidal thoughts by this measure, with the exception of INFJ types [1] [1] http://intjforum.com/showthread.php?t=74782 http://intjforum.com/showthread.php?t=74782
  - DanBC 12y ago
    So what? The attitude should be to aim for zero death by suicide. That's acheivable for places like MIT. It's fucking scandalous that MIT tolerates such a high level of death by suicide.
    - pdonis 12y ago
      > The attitude should be to aim for zero death by suicide. That's acheivable for places like MIT. I agree zero should be the goal, but I don't think it's necessarily achievable. There are multiple factors involved, and the school only controls some of them. Some of them aren't really controllable. (There were multiple suicides at MIT while I was there; none of them were simple cases of "the school didn't pay enough attention".)
      - DanBC 12y ago
        Detroit mental health services achieved a zero suicide rate among their patient population -- a group with higher than normal rates of suicide. http://www.henryford.com/body.cfm?id=46335&action=detail&ref=1104 http://www.henryford.com/body.cfm?id=46335&action=detail&ref... If they can do it then a university can definitely do it. I do understand the sentiment behind "zero is the aim, but pragmatically we can't stop all suicides", but that attitude allows people to die. Even if we do accept that we can't stop every death by suicide we can say that the rate is currently far too high. As one example: People have mentioned deaths from tall buildings. Research shows that you can reduce suicide rates by restricting access to means and methods, so better access[1] controls to rooftops, with anti-suicide fencing, and suicide-prevention telephone number signs, will reduce the numbers of people dying by suicide.
        pdonis 12y ago
        > If they can do it then a university can definitely do it. I'm not sure how comparable the two situations are, although there are certainly measures in the article you linked to that could be applied anywhere. The two populations in question (Detroit mental health services patients vs. MIT students) are very different, as are the environments. > better access controls to rooftops This was done while I was at MIT, but I think the controls were relaxed again some years after I left. One of the issues with any institution over time is that different administrations have different priorities, and often change things for no good reason. MIT, unfortunately, is not immune to this problem.
  - eitally 12y ago
    And besides that, it selects for a population subset of high achieving teens who have been pressured their entire lives by overbearing parents to have passion for math & science/engineering. They may absolutely have no interest whatsoever, but their "tiger parents" helped them achieve to get in and now they're in deep water with no life boat.
pokpokpok 12y ago
engineering school environments can be very toxic. I think that for the most part it's possible to cover their amount of content in 4 standard years, but there needs to be changes in the structure of constant bewilderment and test taking
- madisonmay 12y ago
  If you're interested on a radical new take on engineering education, take a look at Olin College of Engineering. It's not perfect, but it's a move in the right direction -- Olin has traded strict competition for teamwork, tests and exams for project-based learning, and has gone a long way towards removing the stress associated with many other engineering schools. It's a sort of institutional petri dish, and I'm curious to see how many of the principles put in place at this smaller institution are applied in more common settings.
- paganel 12y ago
  > engineering school environments can be very toxic I still have very intense school-related nightmares from time to time, even though I'm now in my mid-30s. I decided to drop-out in my last year of CS school, but before that almost any joy of attending my school lectures or studying for its exams had been killed off inside of me (luckily enough for me I discovered PHP and Python during my student years in my free time, which gave me back the joy of building and discovering things).
aceperry 12y ago
"It's not just MIT, it's pretty much any college with a 4 year engineering program" Not at all. I went to a school when engineering was in high demand, and most of the students seemed to be in the program mainly because of the abundance of jobs. Most of the students seemed to disdain people who were really interested in technology and science. Most of the instructors were demoralized by the low quality of the students and had a lot of contempt for the students. It was hard to find a lab partner who could do the work. Most students seemed to be slackers and disparaged students who tried to do things outside of class. The administration was uncaring as well. It was a shitty experience and I had always been envious of the MIT, CalTech, and Berkeley students. I have a lot more respect for the grads from those schools than from my school.
auxym 12y ago
Don't thind that's true. My 4 year program was definitely very challenging. It was tough, there was a lot of pressure to achieve Great Things (culture and history of large, successful student projects). There were no suicides. And that's in the canadian province (excluding territories) with the highest suicide rate, especially for young men. I did hear about one person who collapsed during an end-of-semester presentation. From stress and exhaustion, I'm assuming. My theory is that it's because the atmosphere was very much more cooperative than competitive. No one was competing for grades, it wasn't rare to have the whole class helping each other out before exams. There was no grading on a curve, and I think most people realized that at the end of the day grades were not really that important to get a job. Turns out I wish I had realized that they were important to get scholarship money in grad school, but hey, at least I had fun working on awesome projects (while fucking up on exams). From the campus talk, it seems the Medicine program had it way harder. Very competitive to get into specialties or whatever. There definitely were suicides one in a while.

madisonmay 12y ago

I disagree with this sentiment. Suicide rates this high are not acceptable side effects of simply studying engineering. Yes, it's typically a tough program, but action needs to be taken to address a deeper issue. It's the intense pressure to succeed in an environment where stress is worn as a badge of honor that creates these issues, not the academic rigor of studying science/engineering.

hharnisch 12y ago
These disciplines attract a certain type of personality and are often people of high intelligence. Suicide rates among these cohorts is elevated to begin with. I don't know if it's enough to make up for an extra 4 per 100,000, but I can't help but wonder.
- amelius 12y ago
  Interesting point. It turns out that introvert personalities are more commonly seen on suicidal forums. Closer inspection reveals that introvert intuitive (IN) type of personalities rank by far highest in suicidal thoughts by this measure, with the exception of INFJ types [1] [1] http://intjforum.com/showthread.php?t=74782 http://intjforum.com/showthread.php?t=74782
- DanBC 12y ago
  So what? The attitude should be to aim for zero death by suicide. That's acheivable for places like MIT. It's fucking scandalous that MIT tolerates such a high level of death by suicide.
  - pdonis 12y ago
    > The attitude should be to aim for zero death by suicide. That's acheivable for places like MIT. I agree zero should be the goal, but I don't think it's necessarily achievable. There are multiple factors involved, and the school only controls some of them. Some of them aren't really controllable. (There were multiple suicides at MIT while I was there; none of them were simple cases of "the school didn't pay enough attention".)
    - DanBC 12y ago
      Detroit mental health services achieved a zero suicide rate among their patient population -- a group with higher than normal rates of suicide. http://www.henryford.com/body.cfm?id=46335&action=detail&ref=1104 http://www.henryford.com/body.cfm?id=46335&action=detail&ref... If they can do it then a university can definitely do it. I do understand the sentiment behind "zero is the aim, but pragmatically we can't stop all suicides", but that attitude allows people to die. Even if we do accept that we can't stop every death by suicide we can say that the rate is currently far too high. As one example: People have mentioned deaths from tall buildings. Research shows that you can reduce suicide rates by restricting access to means and methods, so better access[1] controls to rooftops, with anti-suicide fencing, and suicide-prevention telephone number signs, will reduce the numbers of people dying by suicide.
      - pdonis 12y ago
        > If they can do it then a university can definitely do it. I'm not sure how comparable the two situations are, although there are certainly measures in the article you linked to that could be applied anywhere. The two populations in question (Detroit mental health services patients vs. MIT students) are very different, as are the environments. > better access controls to rooftops This was done while I was at MIT, but I think the controls were relaxed again some years after I left. One of the issues with any institution over time is that different administrations have different priorities, and often change things for no good reason. MIT, unfortunately, is not immune to this problem.
- eitally 12y ago
  And besides that, it selects for a population subset of high achieving teens who have been pressured their entire lives by overbearing parents to have passion for math & science/engineering. They may absolutely have no interest whatsoever, but their "tiger parents" helped them achieve to get in and now they're in deep water with no life boat.

pokpokpok 12y ago

engineering school environments can be very toxic. I think that for the most part it's possible to cover their amount of content in 4 standard years, but there needs to be changes in the structure of constant bewilderment and test taking

madisonmay 12y ago
If you're interested on a radical new take on engineering education, take a look at Olin College of Engineering. It's not perfect, but it's a move in the right direction -- Olin has traded strict competition for teamwork, tests and exams for project-based learning, and has gone a long way towards removing the stress associated with many other engineering schools. It's a sort of institutional petri dish, and I'm curious to see how many of the principles put in place at this smaller institution are applied in more common settings.
paganel 12y ago
> engineering school environments can be very toxic I still have very intense school-related nightmares from time to time, even though I'm now in my mid-30s. I decided to drop-out in my last year of CS school, but before that almost any joy of attending my school lectures or studying for its exams had been killed off inside of me (luckily enough for me I discovered PHP and Python during my student years in my free time, which gave me back the joy of building and discovering things).

aceperry 12y ago

"It's not just MIT, it's pretty much any college with a 4 year engineering program" Not at all. I went to a school when engineering was in high demand, and most of the students seemed to be in the program mainly because of the abundance of jobs. Most of the students seemed to disdain people who were really interested in technology and science. Most of the instructors were demoralized by the low quality of the students and had a lot of contempt for the students. It was hard to find a lab partner who could do the work. Most students seemed to be slackers and disparaged students who tried to do things outside of class. The administration was uncaring as well. It was a shitty experience and I had always been envious of the MIT, CalTech, and Berkeley students. I have a lot more respect for the grads from those schools than from my school.

auxym 12y ago

Don't thind that's true. My 4 year program was definitely very challenging. It was tough, there was a lot of pressure to achieve Great Things (culture and history of large, successful student projects). There were no suicides. And that's in the canadian province (excluding territories) with the highest suicide rate, especially for young men. I did hear about one person who collapsed during an end-of-semester presentation. From stress and exhaustion, I'm assuming. My theory is that it's because the atmosphere was very much more cooperative than competitive. No one was competing for grades, it wasn't rare to have the whole class helping each other out before exams. There was no grading on a curve, and I think most people realized that at the end of the day grades were not really that important to get a job. Turns out I wish I had realized that they were important to get scholarship money in grad school, but hey, at least I had fun working on awesome projects (while fucking up on exams). From the campus talk, it seems the Medicine program had it way harder. Very competitive to get into specialties or whatever. There definitely were suicides one in a while.