Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: EL KABONG!!! who wrote (42647)	5/13/2011 11:57:14 PM
From: Jurgis Bekepuris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78627

The biggest price headache for colleges is not administrative costs and/or salaries. It's the cost of technological advancements that directly affect graduating students. By the time a student graduates from a four year program, what s/he learned in the first 2 or 3 years is technologically obsolete already. Colleges cannot graduate students that haven't been exposed to the latest and greatest in technology, whether it's hardware or software programs. The costs associated with replacing existing technology nearly every year is staggering. Do you have data on this or are you just speculating? I am asking because I am not sure how much you are correct. I work in computer science and pretty much nothing has become obsolete in the last 10 years. C/C++/Java/Python/Javascript/Perl/Windows/Linux/MacOS/databases/etc. have all been around for 10 years or more and have not changed much. Sure, there are some changes, but IMHO the whole cry of technological obsolescence is way overblown. IMHO a lot of it is pure marketing by schools - pay us moolah and you'll get the latest and greatest! Other students won't have a chance to compete! Do you know what MIT or Stanford teach their undergrads in CS? Guess what - pretty much the same things as 10 years ago! Maybe somebody should tell them that they won't get jobs after learning "obsolete" stuff at the two most prestigious CS schools. ;) Is there an area which is progressing faster than Computer Science so to require updates every 2 years? Examples? On the equipment side, I agree that a computer lifetime at college lab is probably ~3-4 years because it's just not worth fixing after that time. And software licenses might cost renewal if school does not use free software. But even Microsoft seems to have lowered their educational prices a lot. 100 computers at $1000 a pop is still only $100K. Multiply by 2 for upkeep, amortize over 4 years and you're still talking only 50K per year. A BIG lab for a cost of a single professor...