[910] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
My meeting with Marilee Jones
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Tibbetts)
Thu Oct 4 22:43:37 2001
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Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 22:09:28 -0400
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<MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU>, Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU>
From: Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
This morning I met with Marilee Jones for one and a half hours. It was
a very good meeting, and something I hope that I can repeat in the
future once. For now I want to summarize some things that came up,
things that many people might not understand. I will keep this short,
because I am very busy. I will try to respond to concerns or questions
people raise.
1) Jones does not want to admit the students she describes. She would
rather admit old-style passionate and technically oriented
students. But she can't find them.
She, by all accounts, wants the same students you and I do. She has
been at MIT a long time, likes MIT students. And faculty feel the same
way. They are always breathing down the neck of admissions to find
better students. In recent years, though, the tenor has changed from
"These kids aren't what they used to be" to "No really, these kids are
unacceptable."
The college admissions process, nationally, sucks. Everyone (nearly)
has read books that explain the ins and outs of college admissions.
Mediocre students make themselves look like good students. Even good
students feel like they have to follow the guidelines. With everyone
knowing exactly what to say and how to look, admissions is having a
terrible time sorting through the mess.
And it isn't just a question of replacing them with someone who can do
better, or getting faculty more involved. Every faculty member who has
gotten involved, according to Jones, has found the job to be just as
impossible as she has. One thing she said was that she often gives
groups of angry faculty student folders to look through and to do a
better job with. They always either end up disillusioned, picking out
one or two students from hundreds, or they end up picking the same
students she would have.
She encourages students to get involved. There is a committee, CUAFA,
for students interested in long term involvement (I think I will
pursue such a position). It is a very active and real committee,
chaired by Sadoway, and the faculty on it are really interested in
making things work. The current student membership seems to be not so
vocal, and she would not mind seeing that change. For students who
just want to share some insight, send her an email or meet with her.
She will listen. Especially you freshmen. You're here for four more
years. If you care, tell her where she can find other people who care.
And tell me too, cause I want to know.
My analogy: It would be nice if she were looking for diamonds in the
rough. The reality is that she is looking for diamonds in big piles of
cubic zirconia, through a close circuit television camera.
2) No really, she is looking hard.
MIT admissions does more outreach, more going out and grabbing the
kind of student we want and dragging them back here, than any other
school. Not just programs like RSI. Admissions officers (according to
Jones) go to science fairs, engineering competitions, and into the
pits at auto races looking for the kind of student that professors
want.
3) She does not necessarily want MIT to coddle these kids. What she
wants is for MIT, especially the faculty, to accept that this is
what they have to work with, and to find new ways to turn them into
graduates we can respect.
Too many faculty are willing to let people slide by and focus on the
students they like, in her opinion. The faculty have to educate
whoever we let in here, because we are going to graduate them in 4
years.
I agree. If we can't find students who can become real engineer with
our current system, we need to find a new system. MIT can't be
graduating incompetent people.
Of course, Jones and I differ about what changes are necessary. Big
surprise. Thats why I am still writing to the FNL.
4) She is really big on this generational stuff.
Jones is a bit too enthused about defining people (faculty, students,
administrators, everyone) by their generation. Not sure where to go
with this one.
5) The terminology of her article was directed at other
administrators. And by leadership, she doesn't mean bad things.
Not sure where to go with this one. I think it shows both her lover
for generations (as if we don't speak the same language) and possibly
some failure to see students as her peers.
She sees a failure in leadership among her peers that is characterized
by wielding power clumsily, making decisions without consensus. At
least that is what she said to me. I'm not sure it squares with what
appeared in her article.
6) She sees faculty and administrators ("adults") as stewards of the
university.
Other than the term adults, I can accept this. Those of us that are
only here for four years have a different perspective and may be less
able or willing to make decisions that work in the long term.
However, it does show a failure to understand the phenomenon of alumni
involvement that I know and love.
7) Non-mandatory admissions interviews is a failure, and they are
coming back next year.
The goal of making them non mandatory was so that students applying at
the last minute (there are more and more of these, applying after
being rejected by their early decision school) wouldn't host
interviews around Christmas time. The belief was that students who
cared about MIT would do the interview anyways. This has not panned
out, with very few students interviewing. So the interview will be
back next year, somehow.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE
I still think that she doesn't understand how important it is that we
remain attractive to the kind of student she claims to want. Informing
her and the faculty of this is good and that is what I plan to do.
I agree that MIT needs to meet the needs of the students it admits,
that it has to accept responsibility for turning them into graduates
it can be proud of and who will continue to by respected by their
peers in industry and academia and by society at large. I think that
the way to do this is to force them to become adults in a trial by
fire. But maybe that is not sufficient.
At any rate, I really need to be tooling. I hope I didn't get anything
overtly wrong. Happy discussion.
tibbetts
PS: The state of mit-talk sucks. I don't want duplicate copies of
messages, hours late and out of order. I encourage people who really
want to flame someone and who agree with me to send mail to
talk-request@mit.edu. I would prefer if discussion of list policies
didn't come onto the list though.
