Internet Curfew for College Students?

140Mandak262Jamuna writes "IIT Bombay, one of the top Indian engineering schools, is restricting internet access to its students. The restriction is simply to cut off all internet access at night from the dorms. The school claims the 24/7/365 internet access is hampering academic performance, personality development and extra curricular activities. Though these are the 'official' reasons, it appears there are other reasons too. Mr Prakash Gopalan, the Dean of Student Affairs, says, 'one only had to look at the hard drive of any of the students' computers to see that bad content dominated over good.'"

One more college differentiator

[davidwr]

Now in addition to tuition, sports, and *gasp* quality of education, students will select schools based on Internet availability.

Will?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about have been? For more than a decade? I'm not saying it was the factor in the school I chose, but the ethernet port per person in the dorm rooms sure made me a lot happier with my decision, and that was in 1996.

Same..

[CasperIV]

I don't think I would attend a school that tried to restrict my internet access or had a poor infrastructure. If I'm going to school, and paying a fortune to attend, I expect to have access to every tool I might need any time I might need it (barring physical limitations).

By the time you reach college you should be self sufficient enough to manage your own affairs. If your not, you deserve what you get (fail/get pregnant/have a kid/get arrested/etc). It's not the schools place to babysit the students at this level.

Re:

[morcego]

By the time you reach college you should be self sufficient enough to manage your own affairs.

Maybe where you live. But here, on plant earth, that is not even close to true.

By the time you reach college you should be self sufficient enough to manage your own affairs.

I think 99% of the parents would disagree with you on that one.

In any case, I don't think this internet curfew will solve anything, besides annoying the hell out of people and making it hard for students to search for reference material at night

Re:Same..

[morcego]

You don't think college students should be self-sufficient enough to manage their own affairs? I'll agree that most of them probably aren't (and I'll admit there are things I could have managed better when I was a student), but they're adults, they really ought to be.

Well, "should" really doesn't many any difference, does it ? As far as I'm concerned, they should be at 12.

If not, perhaps we ought to raise the legal age of adulthood and make sure all these kids have guardians until they graduate?

Most are not "adult" enough to manage their own affairs by the time they graduate, either.

Then again, unless at some point they do start trying to do it (and fail), they will never learn. Managing one own life is something you only learn from experience (making mistakes), as far as I'm concerned.

The main difference is between supervision and "control". The Internet Curfew is not supervision or education, it is control. The only thing resulting from this is people how are even less capable or managing their own affairs. So, IN THIS PARTICULAR case:

Supervision = good
Control = bad

Re:

[Redlazer]

The reason they are freeze when they get a problem, is probably because thats what they where trained to do.

I know that in most of my jobs, if i where to use my intuition and try and solve the problem on my own, i would probably have ended up doing something wrong in the bosses eyes, and i would either get yelled at or fired.

In fact, i can think of numerous examples where i DID take the initiative, and solved a problem on my own, and i was told off for it. It was immensely frustrating - here i was doing

Re:

[Score Whore]

If I'm going to school, and paying a fortune to attend, I expect to have access to every tool I might need any time I might need it (barring physical limitations).

As a taxpayer I expect that my state funded schools exist to serve the purpose of education. Since that appears to be your goal as well I think we should form a coalition to achieve this purpose. Our platform can be:

1) Internet banwidth is provided for the purpose of education. Any educational use that is associated with the student's current cour

Re:

[rodoke3]

As long as you add: 6) No student may be compelled to subscribe to university internet access, or any internet access. 7) The university shall not penalize students in any fashion for observing 6). 8) The university shall provide no unreasonable barriers to private service to their students. I will happily join your "coalition". As a fellow taxpayer, I feel the same way. If students want to waste time, I say let them do it on their own dime. You with me?

Re:

[Thuktun]

2) Any usage that does not fit under #1 will be billed at $1.00 per bit. Payable immediately.

If you're concerned about "inappropriate use of state funded resources", charge them what it actually costs for their traffic, not some exorbitant, punitive rate.

Re:

[Percy_Blakeney]

Universities aren't in the business of providing internet access.

Of course they are. Go to any university and ask the person responsible for filling the dorms what would happen if they cut off Internet access. They realize very well that internet access in a dorm room is considered essential, and that the demand for dorm rooms will take a hit if they don't have it. It's become a basic cost of doing business.

At a university where they have both types of usage on the same networks, it may well be that

Re:

[asliarun]

I don't think I would attend a school that tried to restrict my internet access or had a poor infrastructure. If I'm going to school, and paying a fortune to attend

A fair comment, IF you're paying the school a fortune. Education in the IITs is highly subsidized, and is ridiculously low, if compared to an American engineering school. If a government subsidized computer network is being misused by the students, it isn't too unfair of the government to try and curb it.

I expect to have access to every tool I

Whatever allows you finer granularity in deciding

[an.echte.trilingue]

Now in addition to tuition, sports, and *gasp* quality of education, students will select schools based on Internet availability.

I think that probably internet connectivity and and quality of education are related. I know that I work and learn best between 8:00PM and midnight, and the labs at school are usually nice and quiet on Friday and Saturday evenings. It would be a shame not to be able to take advantage of my work cycle.

Now, if they filtered slashdot, I would spend way more time learning...

Re:Whatever allows you finer granularity in decidi

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Just Friday and Saturday?

Real hardcore CS students sit in the comp.lab from 1600-0800 every day of the week, including Sunday.

Internet access is integral to education...

[Short Circuit]

Eh? What about those of us whose extracurricular [grc4.org] activities [rosettacode.org] depend on the Internet? And those of us who colleges offer courses online? Those of us who take classes in the evening, and catch up with our social lives afterward?

Glad I don't live in a dorm.

Re:

[jcorno]

I never started writing a paper more than 12 hours before it was due. That policy would've screwed me over pretty good. These people act like they've never heard of an all-nighter before.

Re:Internet access is integral to education...

[westlake]

These people act like they've never heard of an all-nighter before.

or maybe after seeing the end product of an all-nighter they want to put an end to it.

Re:

[lucabrasi999]

I never started writing a paper more than 12 hours before it was due. That policy would've screwed me over pretty good. These people act like they've never heard of an all-nighter before.

Sounds like you never heard of a typewriter, or GASP!, pen and paper.

Re:Internet access is integral to education...

[lucabrasi999]

So how is writing papers with no or severely limited research materials going for you?

Just where in the article did it say the students couldn't do their work in the library?

Re:

[Metasquares]

I don't know about other students, but if I had to trek to the campus library every time I needed to cite a reference, I never would have become interested in doing research in the first place and certainly would not be able to slog through the mess that is the first year of a Ph. D. Encouraging bright students to consider research is an important function of a university, integral to future scientific progress (because where else would it happen?), and therefore that IIT is doing this indicates to me that

Re:Internet access is integral to education...

[lucabrasi999]

but if I had to trek to the campus library every time I needed to cite a reference

...you would have been doing the same thing as Albert Einstein. Or Copernicus. Or Plato.

Re:

[loganrapp]

Whom, if given the chance, never would have utilized the Internet, right?

Re:

[Metasquares]

Relative to other researchers of the time, I would be putting myself at a disadvantage. It'd be like Einstein traveling to other researchers' locations to discover their work, rather than visiting the library.

Re:

[lucabrasi999]

I would be putting myself at a disadvantage

I live near Pittsburgh, about 15 miles away from the campuses of the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. When it is not rush hour, it would take me about 20 minutes to reach campus. During rush hour? Maybe 45 minutes. Add 10 minutes to park the car and walk to the library, that means I am between 30 minutes and one hour away from where I need to do work. Just how much of a disadvantage are you talking about?

The students at IIT-Bombay a

Re:

[Metasquares]

You're missing the point. The library may not have the papers I require, whereas I can almost guarantee that they are available online. Why waste research time running all over campus to access resources that I should have available here?

Re:

[Metasquares]

(Here generally referring to my research lab, but extending to wherever I happen to be, whether in my home or in another country)

Re:

[kalirion]

Just where in the article did it say the students couldn't do their work in the library?

Research in the library? What is this, the 20th century?

Re:

[Sosigenes]

To me, telling them to go elsewhere doesn't seem like a very adequate solution. I don't know about you, but I know I and most of the people I know when we have a large task at hand which requires concentration prefer to be on our own in the quiet able to get on with it and focus, as opposed to being in a room with lots of other students, distractions and noise. Plus, if the internet is cut off in dorms, I am willing to bet a lot of people that go to the libraries and departments afterwards are not going to

Re:

[lucabrasi999]

And why are you assuming all college libraries are open 24 hours?

I never assume. Instead, I do something that you apparently don't. I read the FA --

Ms Thosar-Dixit said students would not have access to the internet in their hostel rooms between 2300 and 1230 but could log on in the library or their departmental laboratories where access will be uninterrupted.

Re:

[MPolo]

But the statement from Ms Thosar-Dixit would seem to be saying that there would indeed be Internet access in the libraries and the departmental labs 24 hours a day. You were already positing doing the work in the last 12 hours before the paper is due without using any books at all (or only books that you had checked out of the library before that deadline), so what does it matter that the library doesn't have all its books on line?

Re:

[Score Whore]

Why are you making up absurd hypotheticals that are in direct contradiction to the statements in the article? It says that access in the library would be available 24 hours a day. Presumedly that will included access to the library as a prerequisite. Therefore your story about the library closing at 6pm would be wrong.

The college they pay to educate them instead wants to make moral judgements on their hard drive content and free time.

You do know that very few colleges actually recover their operating costs

Re:

[lucabrasi999]

You can get summaries online, and a few of the major reference periodicals, but aside from that, MOST of the materials in a college library are OFFline.

What are you talking about? Everyone is acting like losing overnight internet access in the DORM ROOMS is something akin to Hitler firing up the gas chambers. IIT-Bombay has stated that internet service will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in either the library or in the departmental labs. So, if the student is trying to pull an all-nighter,

Re:

[lucabrasi999]

Pen and paper?

I was exaggerating. I finished undergrad in 1988. Most of us didn't have PC's in our rooms, so we did our work at the library on Apple hardware.

by forcing underachievers to perform, do we not risk handing people who are ill-prepared for real-life jobs a diploma?

You might be misreading me. What I am really suggesting is posted here [slashdot.org]. It's not like the students at IIT-Bombay don't have any choices in the matter. Instead, they submit an article to Slashdot, crying about how "oppressed

Re:

[CastrTroy]

I had some friends who had a professor who insisted on hand written papers. The logic behind it was that that they were less likely to copy of they had handwritten the paper. Most students just ended up writing the paper on the computer and then handwriting the final copy. The other consequence is that students were more likely to copy if they had to spend all this extra time writing out the paper by hand.

Re:

[brunascle]

same.

plus, this makes it much more difficult to cram for an exam the night before.

Re:Internet access is integral to education...

[markov_chain]

Without access in dorms, you would just get your lazy bum ass to a lab and do your paper writing there. The awesome social side benefit of this is bonding with other people in the same situation. Only the motivated ones would be in the lab anyway, so this is a great opportunity to create a high quality network.

Re:

[geoffspear]

Unless the motivated ones are actually motivated to do their work in the lab instead of "networking" with people like you who are there to socialize.

Re:Internet access is integral to education...

[markov_chain]

with people like you who are there to socialize.

This reply is what happens when you let people play WoW all night: reasoning abilities and reading comprehension suffer.

Re:

[Zenaku]

Crowding will be an issue. I don't know about everyone else, but where I went to school going to library or communications center to get on a computer meant fighting to find an available machine, and then hoping it wasn't already fracked up.

If there is no access from the dorms, and everyone has to go to the library to get on the net, they're going to need to add a whole lot of public computers at the library -- I think it's a pretty safe bet that there are a good deal many more students using the internet

Re:

[*weasel]

Without access in dorms, you would just get your lazy bum ass to an area bar and blow off last-minute paper writing altogether. The awesome social side benefit of this is bonding with other people in the same situation. Only the motivated ones would be in the lab anyway --stressing out and melting down-- which would make even trying to work there insufferable.

Would they care?

[Moraelin]

Eh? What about those of us whose extracurricular activities depend on the Internet? And those of us who colleges offer courses online? Those of us who take classes in the evening, and catch up with our social lives afterward?

The problem there is that you expect them to be sane and logical about it. If they actually wanted to block "bad content", there would have been lots of other possibilities, like just blocking the porn sites at the proxy. Most companies do that.

In reality it's a knee jerk "think of the

What about this?

[lucabrasi999]

The facilities offered here are top-notch and there are very few engineering institutes in India that offer unlimited access to internet in hostels at all times for all days of the year.......IIT Madras put limits on internet usage more than a year now.Students do not have any net access in their hostel rooms from 0100 to 0500.

So why is it bad when IIT-Bombay limits access?

so you aren't doing anything

[alizard]

science or technology related for a living?

I write Linux tutorials for a living. . . 100% of my research is online. No Net access means I'm out of business.

Online is where one gets current IT and science information, not from textbooks which might be several years old or magazines whose content is months old as of the cover date. Limiting access means limiting student access to essential research materials. A stupid thing for an engineering school to do.

If you have to ask why IIT is doing a bad thing

Re:

[warpEngine]

I'm at IIT-Bombay student, so I can answer that. There haven't been enough computers in labs for *years*, and the authorities have only been sitting on their ass. The ones that are there are down as often as they're up, and many machines are underpowered. And one of our labs is not air-conditioned and gets blistering hot in the summer...

So we buy our own systems. And now they turn off network access at nights. Great going.

Most of us need all-night access before submissions, and to work on our projects,

Squishie

[Stanistani]

>'one only had to look at the hard drive of any of the students' computers to see that bad content dominated over good.'

It's a sad commentary about the Simpsons' effect on our culture - that I can only hear Apu's voice when I read this.

Re:Squishie

[cayenne8]

First thing I wondered is...what the HELL is that administrator doing looking at students' harddrives??

Sounds like some bad snooping going on there.

"It's a sad commentary about the Simpsons' effect on our culture - that I can only hear Apu's voice when I read this."

Heheh...me too...something like "Thank You! Surf again...."

Bad Content

[flynt]

That's because bad content is correlated with very large file sizes. Seriously, how long will this last?

Personality development

[morgan_greywolf]

I had 24/7/365 Net xs when I wuz in coll3g3!!! I turn3d 0ut ju5t f1ne!!! LOL!!!!

Uhhh

[brkello]

So now they download their pr0n during the day instead of at night. Instead of engaging in wholesome activities like playing CS:Source, they will go out drinking and fornicating. College students are going to find ways to be lazy no matter what you do. Just because you can track Internet usage and can't track the other stuff doesn't mean the solution is to cut off the Internet. You are just punishing people who could be using it to further their education.

In any case, I feel sorry for them because clearly they have stupid people in charge. But, on the plus side, they get some real world experience dealing with stupid people making decisions they have no say in.

Re:

[Vengeance]

Yup, sounds just right for preparing engineering students for the business world. There are lots of MBAs out there, you know.

Re:Uhhh

[Hoi Polloi]

It'll just pose a challenge to their CS and EE students. Just wait until they start rigging up wireless links to outside connections. I welcome our new Indian hackers.

Re:

[jovetoo]

Please keep in mind that this is a different culture. It is easy to judge those administrators by our standards, but that does not mean that is just. I have no doubt that they have grown up in an entirely different world than our western world. The changes are coming much faster for them then they came for us (since we are driving them).

They are living in a world where the students (used to) have 24/7/365 access to the internet while a few hundred km out in the country, their 13yr old niece goes into for

Re:

[chaoticgeek]

I agree... During part of my spring break I came back early and the net was down, so I read a book, watched TV, played video games, and played guitar... Lack of internet connection does not stop me from having fun while avoiding that paper that is due... Plus the fact that I will be up till two or three in the morning with or with out an internet connection so it still does not make me go to sleep earlier to get up for class earlier.

no GAMES FOR YOU!

[linuxlover]

From my experience, most IIT Engineering students won't even know CS:Source if it landed on their lap. Sure they are bright people who can solve differential equations in split seconds, but they are not so much into GAMING. I know this first hand, as I have friends from different IITs around India

Re:

[giminy]

Seriously. Most colleges have cable in the dorm. It won't be long before the kids just get a cable modem or DSL service instead of using the campus Intarnet anyway.

This is a classic example of chasing the symptom instead of the "disease" (if, indeed, using the internet a lot could be considered a disease). If the college really thinks downloading warez and pr0n and other late-night internet activities are so bad, why not, y'know, educate students. Oh my, I just suggested that a university educate studen

Re:

[kabocox]

In any case, I feel sorry for them because clearly they have stupid people in charge. But, on the plus side, they get some real world experience dealing with stupid people making decisions they have no say in.

Um, that describes the entire educational process from birth to college as well. You don't have much to any say in how your parents raise you, you don't have any say in what the standards are in the school that your parents send you. If there are lots of stupid people in charge with stupid rules, it's

I Spy

[Nom du Keyboard]

'one only had to look at the hard drive of any of the students' computers to see that bad content dominated over good.'"

Oh, so they're spying on the hard drives of their students now. Bad University! Bad! Have you been taking lessons from the RIAA?

Poor Preparation For Life Experience

[endianx]

If you can't handle college without having the administration trying to force you to work, you aren't going to be able to handle a job. Your boss isn't going to hold your hand. Letting the people spend time on the internet instead of studying weeds out the lazy and promotes the hard working. If you aren't going to make it in your field, it is best you find out quickly, instead of after years of wasted money on college.

I have heard time and time again about Indian education (specifically Computer Science) failing to adequately prepare students for real life. This seems like another example of that.

Re:

[lucabrasi999]

If you can't handle college without having the administration trying to force you to work, you aren't going to be able to handle a job. Your boss isn't going to hold your hand. Letting the people spend time on the internet instead of studying weeds out the lazy and promotes the hard working.

Where did it say the administration would force you to work? All the article said was "No internet access overnight in the student hostels (dorms). Why wouldn't they just get off of their lazy asses and head to the

Re:Poor Preparation For Life Experience

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Why wouldn't they just get off of their lazy asses and head to the library?

A wild guess here - because even in India, it's not generally considered good form to wank in the libtrary?

Re:Poor Preparation For Life Experience

[lucabrasi999]

The point is they are trying to take away a source of entertainment so that the students will engage in more productive activities. The problem is that once they are out of school, the banned sources of entertainment will again become available, and the student will not have learned any self control.

Did you read the article from top to bottom? As I posted in this same discussion, MOST of the university campuses in India do not offer hostel (dorm-room) internet access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In fact, IIT-Madras pulled the access away from the dorms one year ago.

Part of the problem in dorm life is that you put up with the university's rules. If you don't like the rules, move out of the dorm or change to another university.

Take someone that attends a US Military College like West Point. They put up with rules like early morning revile and exercise. But, they receive one of the best educations in the world (of course, as soon as they leave West Point, they are headed to Iraq--but that is another discussion thread).

If you are reading this and you are a student at IIT-Bombay (Mumbai) that happens to disagree with your school's new policy, then you have three choices:

1) Do all of you late-night studying in the library.

2) Move out of your student dormitory.

3) or change schools.

There. Problem solved. And, stop wasting your energies on slashdot submissions.

Re:Poor Preparation For Life Experience

[junglee_iitk]

If you don't like the rules, move out of the dorm or change to another university.

Only none of which is feasible.
1. I am an alumni of IIT-Kanpur (as my handle suggests), and the rule is that if you are a student, you HAVE to live in dorms. I know that same rule applies in IT-BHU.
2. Change university? Are you kidding me? And in NOT-AT-ALL individualistic society, you get to leave one of the only best institutes, when all these institutes share exactly one admission procedure (JEE)? Next thing you will be telling is to have sex in public in India.

Re:

[markov_chain]

What if the 4 years of this ingrains some useful habits into them? I see this with military brats who come to school, they are always really motivated and hard-working.

Re:

[Lemmy Caution]

I had been considering a longer reply, but I can sum it up as: aw, muffin.

Won't Work

[Paulrothrock]

College students are masters of getting what they want despite rules and regulations. Some enterprising group of CS students will go around caching web sites or host forums off of their computers (or the CS lab computers) and the word will get out about where folks can go to be "on the internet" between dusk and dawn.

Of course, there's always game systems, iPods, and off-campus wireless networks for people to use.

The best thing to do would be to raise the requirements for classes, thus forcing people to have to study more, and require participation in an extra-curricular activity as a requirement for graduation. Or you could just realize that socialization patterns are changing and deal with it.

Re:

[Hoi Polloi]

"The best thing to do would be to raise the requirements for classes, thus forcing people to have to study more"

Judging from the intense competition to get in I'd say they are under enough stress already.

Solution

[daeg]

$ du -hLs /home/daeg/porn
18G /home/daeg/porn

$ du -hLs /home/daeg/school
29M /home/daeg/school

Ack! Quick, everyone symlink your porn directory into your school directory!

Re:

[dattaway]

wget -m http://www.pornsite.orgy/ [pornsite.orgy]
mv www.pornsite.orgy cs101
man pgp ...

Re:Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when I was at IIT how students used to burn p0rn CDs and write 'RedHat Linux 7.2' on it. Others (esp. non-CS students) scared of Linux usability never used to lay their hands on them.

Not the solution, but the problem is real

[xerxesnine]

Several years ago I had a (relatively short) spat of addiction to Neverwinter Nights. During a random conversation with my online mates one night, I was rather shocked to discover that most of them were in college. I myself had graduated college several years ago and had solid high-salary job. My Neverwinter hobby/addiction was just a brief fascination --- something to do in between girlfriends.

There is so much studying and socializing to do while in college, I honestly can't imagine playing any online game during college. That is why I was shocked --- I was like, what the FUCK are you doing playing Neverwinter Nights? We had been playing around 4 hours a day. College is a key time to improve oneself, and they had been squandering that time. While I was squandering my own time as well, the difference was that the impact on my life was one hell of a lot less (negligible, in fact).

Re:

[slashrogue]

You say that as if those students didn't presume that the impact on their life was also negligible.

Re:

[raehl]

There is so much studying and socializing to do while in college, I honestly can't imagine playing any online game during college.

Well, you've got to do SOMETHING until you're old enough to get into the bar....

Who says they're squandering?

[phorm]

Consider the number of college students that go out and "booze it up, etc, etc", perhaps rather than doing this, they're spending some time online playing a game. It doesn't necessarily mean that they are neglecting their studies, but rather that they are taking some time here and there to wind down and enjoy a nice game.

I tended to do the full-burn thing early-on, finish my assignments, and then kick back for a game of Quake 2/3 or various others when I was in college. It was a great way to relieve stres

Small problem with the quote, so I fixed it

[Grashnak]

"IIT Bombay, one of the top Indian engineering schools, is restricting beer access to its students. The restriction is simply to cut off all access to beer at night from the dorms. The school claims the 24/7/365 beer access is hampering academic performance, personality development and extra curricular activities.

There, now it resembles MY college reality.

My opinion

[karthikkumar]

Well. Being from a university myself, these are my observations and opinions:

A. You can not stop students from "bad" content. The internet isn't the ONLY source of all this. You can't really stop people from going outside IITB, and you wouldn't want to ransack every visitor at the gate.

B. I am not sure if the argument is against copyrighted content, but otherwise, I definitely believe that students must be given the freedom to watch what they have and what they want. And doing this ransacking business

Moo

[RyoShin]

Because the internet is the only thing that can distract college students in their free time, amirite?

This is retarded

[loconet]

If is truely for the sole purpose of helping people get back to studying, it is a very dangerous "solution". It will just allow more lazy people who don't have their priorities straight into society pretending to be responsible professionals. Let them fail!

I think this is a terrible idea

[Asztal_]

My university also doAÉ$~ß;$ß[;ädsl1pkrp$%£":L$K"P{J^NO CARRIER

According to what standard?

[HangingChad]

Mr Prakash Gopalan, the Dean of Student Affairs, says, 'one only had to look at the hard drive of any of the students' computers to see that bad content dominated over good.'

Bad by what definition? And who sets that standard? The Dean of Student Affairs deciding what's good and bad on the internet is a little like my pharmacist letting their conscience decide which meds are good and bad.

Both of those are bad ideas. Far more dangerous than any content on a college kid's hard drive.

Just because I have more porn

[noc007]

Just because there's porn on my HDDs than anything else, doesn't mean I spend all my time watching porn. It just means I have a large selection to choose from and wont tire easily from my collection. In the amount of hours in a week, I spend the majority of them at work and second to that would be resting.

Idiotic...

[evilviper]

Technological measures don't solve social problems... This is more an act of over-bearing school (nanny) administrators.

Additionally, 802.11 transceivers are tiny, and dirt cheap these days. All it takes is one person to plug a USB adapter into a library or lab computer, change your default gateway, and everyone is online.

And that's assuming they physically sever the network link... If not, any type of masquerading could get access. Even if the lab and library computers are on a separate network segment

One hard drive?

[AeroIllini]

Mr Prakash Gopalan, the Dean of Student Affairs, says, 'one only had to look at the hard drive of any of the students' computers to see that bad content dominated over good.'

Woo! Sample size of one! Now that's what I call a rock-solid statistic.

Facts are for pussies. Feel the truthiness.

so how long will IIT remain a top tech school?

[alizard]

It's precisely the kind of students who aren't satified with anything but "the best" education who are least likely to put up with this.

More to the point, regardless of how much pr0n, myspace, and mp3s/movies students download, the Internet is an absolutely essential research tool for anyone doing science or engineering. The place one gets reference information on components is online. A generation ago, my reference stuff was a shelf of databooks. A few years ago, it was a pile of CDs. Now, I just downloa

Re:

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

Betcha a dollar if they're over 13 and actually care, the internet isn't nearly as restricted as you'd like to think.

Not really the issue at hand, though, is it? Are your children of college age, living at school, and therefor not under your direct authority as a parent?

Re:

[Paulrothrock]

It's nice that you think your kids aren't getting on the Internet when they're not allowed to. And I'm sure they're also just going out to volunteer at church and not smoking weed behind the 7-11.

Re:

[phasm42]

If you're going to pull an all night session it should be studying not gaming or web surfing.

Hmm, and no one studies using resources on the internet?

Re:

[chill]

Except the big difference is the students at college are PAYING to be there and are not your children. They are supposed to be beyond nursemaid age, so stop treating them like babies.

If you want them to study more and improve their education, make the classes tougher and require more original work. Hell, raise the fees for Internet access, but cutting off late-night links is STUPID.

All it means is a few bright students are going to set up wireless links to off-campus DSL and charge a small fee for after-h

Re:

[melikamp]

Actually, after reading the article, I suspect that they are funded by the government (the boss there talks about wasting tax payers' money). If so, it would match up pretty well with their populist approach to education, which includes shaping the students into "well-rounded human beings".

Re:

[AeroIllini]

All it means is a few bright students are going to set up wireless links to off-campus DSL and charge a small fee for after-hours access.

Yes, but think of all the real-world experience those entrepreneurial students are getting in circumventing the law to make a buck!

Our corporations will save billions.

Re:Seems reasonable to me.

[OwenMarshall]

But realize that we are talking about college students -- adults, not children. Providing them with unlimited internet access is an excellent idea -- it ensures that the lazy slackers wash out of college.

For my sophomore year, I had a freshman roommate who used the campus internet to play WoW all night long. Literally -- I went to bed at 2 after finishing engineering homework, was up by 8, and he hadn't moved. Because of that he slept in all day, only to wake up later and play more WoW. Went to classes once a week at best. Guess who dropped out with a GPA below 2.0? Guess who wasn't ready for the real world, and wouldn't be able to hold a job for ten minutes with that approach to life?

An American high-school education is highly devalued from where it was years ago. Social promotions and strict rulesets are eliminating the gap that previously existed between the achieving students and the ones who would fail out. If you narrow that same gap in college, you end up doing the same thing -- churning out students who cannot manage time or priorities, students who stand no chance of surviving in the buisiness world.

Re:

[Strange Ranger]

Social promotions and strict rulesets are eliminating the gap that previously existed between the achieving students and the ones who would fail out.

To oversimplify a bit, it's called "No Child Left Behind", AKA teach to the slowest and/or laziest kid in class and let the rest suffer in pure boredom and angst.

Re: Time Management

[TaoPhoenix]

Bravo!

You pegged it perfectly. It's the GRADES that matter. If someone is bright and gets their work done, ... then they graduate with honors. Having completed their fixed task, they get to socialize, which INCLUDES Net access. If you have to work out a high-bandwidth fee, figure it out.

As someone else pointed out, students were lazing about in drunken stupors in the days before net access. I don't care about how someone washes out. Self control is PART of the unstated education of college, where you don't need Bathroom Passes.

As a much larger issue, in the 21st century, Content Lockdown mentalities are OBSOLETE. Yes, this terrifies many Powers-That-Be. Deal. The Information Age is here forever, and it's only going to get MORE intense.

Universities are ridiculously expensive anyway. They can afford the loss-leader (excepting lawsuits) of a Net connection.

This is just another instance of PowerLust disguised as Think of the Children.

No, not reasonable...

[zappepcs]

All the jokes aside, while it is reasonable for *you* to restrict the activities of *your* children in *your* home, it is NOT okay to limit the activities of college students. Sure, they are there to get an education but what is this teaching them? That censorship is ok or even good?

Morality, social behavior, and personal habits are not modified in good ways by censorship or other controlling means. It might work right now for your children, but these are not children, they are college students - young adul

Re:

[Rakishi]

The primary purpose of attending university is to get an education, not 24/7 Internet access.

Depends how you define "education" as classes are far from the only thing it encompasses. The best use of a university is to create connections and to network. What you know doesn't matter as much in life as who you know and how you can leverage your knowledge.

I can and do restrict online access of the children at home. My house, my rules.

So either your kids are idiots or young, well or you're an idiot/fool. Last I checked college students are adults and if you think 18 year old are kids and need to be babied I feel bad for your offspring (due to the horrible parenting they are recei

Re:Seems reasonable to me.

[Broken scope]

Except most of my studying comes from online resources. Oh fuck, I don't have access to the JAVA API, shit I can't get to suns site now. I've got some work to do and I need to go look some stuff up in the crypto. To bad thanks to asshats like you I can't do that now. Shit?!? Something is wrong with my IDE. Oh fuck, I can't go get another copy because I can't get to Borlands site.

You pay for the access, you can do what ever the hell you want with it. I pay a technology fee which covers my access. I'm paying, I get to do what I want with it as long as I don't harm the universities network environment. I've read the contract very thoroughly.

Re:

[melikamp]

The primary purpose of attending university is to get an education, not 24/7 Internet access.

Mmm? Take Computer Science, for example. The Internet is indisputably the best academic resource for it. To a somewhat lesser degree it goes also for other areas of science. If anything, universities should be encouraging students to use Internet as a research and collaboration tool. It can be a platform for building a scientific community which could not exist in the world of paper journals.

Re:Seems reasonable to me.

[Stevecrox]

Theres this thing called the interweb which is kinda integral to studying, my final year presentation is coming up and I want things perfect one of the best resources for my project is actually online (www.8052.com) so smart alecs like you kill my access at 10pm and suddenly when I hit a problem what do I do. Oh and BTW I'm currently working on this thing from 9am to 2am and have been for two weeks (project from hell, when something can go wrong it has) by your logic I'm a whiney uni boy instead of a nearly burnt out from working on this project student. My university provides free unlimited access but blocks ports associated with filesharing, this solution kills most online games and yet allows students to work from 9am to 2am.

Oh and the thing is college and university student are adults, if you treat them like children how are they going to cope in the real world? A university policy of asking students not to engage in illegal activites or do things which could be offensive to others (while detailing how said offended person should react) is more than enough, more than likely Bombay doesn't like its bandwidth bills and so it cutting back

Re:

[Yartrebo]

The library at every school I've ever been to is closed at night and has pretty limited hours. P2P can be done by sneakernet, but actual research is going to be nearly impossible if you aren't a good enough planner to have relevant books on hand (and knowing me, that's usually the case).

Re:

[superpulpsicle]

In other news India universities discovered they have money to rehire those nighttime sysadmins again...

Re:

[Cctoide]

What does one do during "late night browsing" that doesn't involve "touching the hard drive"? Eh?

Re:

[SCHecklerX]

And every time you post that picture, god kills a domo-kun...

http://www.tessums.com/cliche/images/kitty7.jpg [tessums.com]