Thursday, September 3, 2009

Priorities

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that Boston University is the best school in its town. There are two or three others that rank a bit higher. Yet perhaps that's a purposeful decision, to excel in other ways.

This way, for example.

I suppose I could say someting profound about priorites, entitlement and other such matters, but given the fine view, who'd want to listen? Anyway, I'm off topic. Gotta get back to the depressing things of life.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Well BU does excel in number of spoiled foreign children of very wealthy parents, so building this dorm makes sense.

To be fair, though, all of the BU students and faculty I've worked with have been top notch.

Michael W. said...

I go to a private college in southern central Pennsylvania. It is by no means a prestigious school, but the dorm room I got into, is HUGE, at no extra cost. My dormitory is brand new. Okay, there is no view, but the amount of space given to just two people (my roommate and I) is ridiculous. There is enough room for 4 people. They should be trying to lower costs. Instead they used my money (okay, it's not just mine) on stupid artsy stuff tied from strings to the ceiling.

Anonymous said...

Well, as Saintsbury said, the number of people who really go to university to study is always very small; the proportion of people who need education for brain work rather than hand work is very small; and there is no better place for absolute leisure.

As to the organlegging blood libel, I wonder how this one compares to the Mexican stories of US bent medics. And don't other Asians have an equivalent rumor about the Japanese? You'd think someone on the Internet would have done the work for us by now.
Bruce

Anonymous said...

BU may be the best university in Boston. Of course, across the river in Cambridege is MIT-a mile away in Cambridet is Harvard.
Afew miles away is Brandeis-but none are in Boston itself. So it is likely that BU is the best university in Boston-but that is misleading.

Mycroft

Anonymous said...

As a Boston University student, I don't particularly mind this new building: before it was finished, they housed extra students in the hotel across the river in Cambridge (which was irritating for those students, and the school had to run an extra free bus service to get to the hotel). Furthermore, the plans and construction began in much better economic times, and BU has had numerous new academic buildings in the last few years (the new School of Hospitality building, the new School of Management building, the new School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences building), as well as a brand new (and beautiful) Hillel House.

BU has done all kinds of construction in the past few years, and in light of economic conditions, the construction of the next dorm tower (that article is about Student Village II; Student Village I was completed some years ago), named StuVi III, was put on hold. That being said, there are numerous departments within BU operating in aging buildings that are too small (like Psychology), and the Photonics building has not attracted the kind of academic firepower that the university predicted, but it's not like BU has put no money towards anything else. I can afford to attend because of the generous financial aid they give me, so I can't really complain.

But while it is a technicality, BU is the best school in Boston proper. Harvard and MIT are in Cambridge, Boston College is in Chapel Hill, and Tufts and Brandeis are barely in the area. The only other universities in Boston proper are Northeastern, Suffolk, and UMass Boston, and there are a handful of smaller colleges; BU is consistently rated more favorably than all of these. We may not be the best school in the *area,* but in the *town,* we're unbeaten.