Re: MS helps Higher Ed again!

["Eric M. Bennett" <ericb@pobox.com>]

Steve Cohen wrote:

> All of these incidents are
>standard corporate operating procedure, perfectly legal, and totally
>disgusting.

I agree in general, but on the other hand sometimes you have to wonder
whether or not it's better for the university to take the money than to
refuse it and not hire someone or improve its equipment.  When I was an
undergraduate at Penn State, the head of the Computer Science department
told me I could not take an intermediate-level programming course because
the department didn't even have enough resources (both instructors and
computers) to adequately teach the course for people whose majors required
it (as a biochemist, I obviously did not require this course).  Would it be
better if I had been able to take the course due to some ethically
questionable corporate donations?  That's a hard question to answer without
knowing the full ill effects of the donation.

Of course, when it's a widespread and systematic campaign affecting large
numbers of universities instead of just being a single incident at one
institution, it's much harder to defend.



--
Eric Bennett ( http://www.pobox.com/~ericb/ )
Cornell University, Field of Biochemistry, 377 Olin Chemistry Lab

We have increased our prices over the last 10 years [while]
other component prices have come down and continue to come down.
-Joachim Kempin, Senior Vice President, Microsoft Corp.